


pedestal

by befehlvonganzunten (blueprintofyourpast)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: (If that's even a thing), Adult Michelle Jones, Adult Peter Parker, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Averagely Paced Burn, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Feelings, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Idiots in Love, Light Angst, Mentions of Real Life Events, Mild Sexual Content, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:15:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27414829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueprintofyourpast/pseuds/befehlvonganzunten
Summary: They met at her brother’s birthday/New Year’s Eve party back in 2011. The playlist was a tribute to the past decade and MJ was making peanut butter sandwiches in the kitchen. She wasn’t interested in anything he had to say until he mentioned that a friend of his was an intern at Stark Industries. That’s when she locked eyes with him and asked him about his stance on global arms trade.Whatever he said, it launched a long debate on everything and nothing and he liked how they bounced back and forth between topics and how they agreed to disagree more often than he could count. He liked that neither of them was eager to ‘win’ the conversation.He joined her outside on the balcony when the new year was still an hour or so away and watched her light a cigarette with a matchstick. He tried to convince her that she should quit smoking because it was bad for her, but she just smirked and called him a 'loser' and he knew he wanted to be her friend....Or: A story about two New Yorkers in their mid-to-late twenties whose friendship is simple but also a bit complicated.
Relationships: Michelle Jones & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Other Relationships
Comments: 126
Kudos: 84





	1. Chapter 1

**Fall 2014**

She’s already on the subway when she looks down at her clothes and finds a mustard stain on her sweater. It’s deep yellow against light grey and she curses under her breath. The words get swallowed by the rattle of the train in a matter of seconds, so no one pays her any mind. She would be relieved if she weren’t so busy being annoyed. It’s not like Bruce is going to say anything about it, but as her therapist he’s probably going to add ‘sloppy eater’ to her list of flaws.

No, scratch that. She should give Bruce more credit. He isn’t looking for flaws and she doesn’t hate him or anything. He was recommended to her by a friend of her mother who went to Harvard with him. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on social anxiety in the age of globalisation and social media. She read it before she called to make an appointment. It was quite impressive and gave her a lot to think about.

Bruce used to have anger issues when he was younger and now he’s a Zen master. He’s very smart and he’s very patient with her. He never tries to insult her intelligence by explaining basic psychology to her, and he wasn’t offended when she stepped into his office for the first time back in May and told him that having nothing but tabloids and sports magazines on the coffee table in the waiting room was kinda sexist. Instead, he looked dumbfounded and asked her what kind of magazines she preferred to read in her free time. She didn’t really know what to say then and mumbled something about travel. The next week, she found the latest issue of _Travel + Leisure_ lying atop _Sports Illustrated_ and _Us Weekly_.

.

.

.

“I was in a hurry,” she tells him as she shrugs off her dark blue Herschel backpack and settles in the orange armchair that is reserved for his clients.

“Um, what?”

Bruce is bent over his desk, typing away on his laptop like he always does before they start. He’s not a very orderly person. There’s no system behind the way the subject literature in his bookshelves is sorted. His desk is in a perpetual state of chaos, his wardrobe is a collection of unpressed white shirts, ill-fitting jeans and bulky corduroy jackets. He often misplaces his glasses, too. She looks down at her sweater again and wonders why she was bothered by the stain in the first place.

“I was in a hurry,” she says again when he’s seated in the black armchair opposite hers. She keeps her gaze on his left shoulder because she’s bad at having a conversation and maintaining eye contact at the same time, “I was running late and I forgot about lunch, so I bought a hot dog to-go.”

“Okay.”

She can tell that he’s trying his best not to look confused. She gestures at the dried mustard on her sweater.

“Oh. I didn’t even notice that,” he says with a laugh, “But I’m glad you remembered to have lunch.”

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask where you bought the hot dog?”

“Uh – Frankies.”

“That place at Grand Central?”

“Yeah, they – they have a vegetarian option. It was – uh – it was good.”

He smiles and nods, seemingly untroubled by her stuttering. To an outsider, it must look like he’s asking her food questions to figure out if there’s something wrong with her eating habits and like she’s being nervous about answering those questions because she has something to hide. It’s not like that, though. She’s a healthy eater. Bruce is just worried about her tendency to forget about basic physiological needs when she’s stressed or upset about something.

Ironically, she’s always stressed or upset about something these days, but Bruce says that anger can be an excellent motivator. All you need to do is take that anger and find a way to use it for something good. Playing the drums helps, for example. Her teacher, Gwen, studies at Juilliard and is obviously brilliant. She found her on Craigslist. They’re both passionate about politics and music.

Communication is also important even though she totally sucks in that department, which is probably why she’s here. It’s not like she’s lonely or anything. She has her parents, who like to dote on her, and she has her dog, Pumpkin, an old male English Bulldog she adopted last year. She has a couple of people at work she doesn’t want to murder on a daily basis, she reads a lot and she feeds the ducks at Flushing Meadows every other Sunday. She’s just busy. Like pretty much everyone else in this city.

“How have you been, Michelle?”

She lets her gaze roam across the room. Bruce works at a joint practice. His colleagues, Dr Ross and Dr Samson, used to date in college, but now Bruce and Dr Ross are a couple. (She doesn’t know that because she asked or because Bruce or Betty told her about it. She knows because she’s very observant.) The walls in his office are plastered with art prints by Niobe Xandó and a few other Brazilian painters. Bruce has kind of a thing for Brazil. He took a semester abroad at USP during his Harvard years and he still likes to fly down to São Paulo in the summer to visit his former guest family and the friends he made there.

“I’ve been thinking about calling a friend of mine,” she hears herself mumble, “We don’t see each other very often, but I thought it would be nice to – uh – you know, catch up or whatever. I actually feel bad because I haven’t called him in a while.”

Her cheeks become a little hot. She rarely mentions her friends because she doesn’t have too many of them. She’s kind of a hermit. She’s always been kind of a hermit, but there used to be a time when she was better at keeping in touch with people. Maybe that’s why Bruce’s face lights up like a Christmas tree.

“Sounds like a good idea,” he says, “Where’s the catch?”

She lets out a wry laugh. There’s always a catch.

“My brother,” she says, peering at the toes of her white sneakers, “He – He introduced him to me.”

For a moment, the words seem to float in the air between them. She takes the opportunity and reminds herself that she’ll have to make a stop at the grocery store later because she’s out of milk. She also needs tampons and peppermint gum. When she lifts her head, Bruce is giving her a sympathetic smile.

She flexes her fingers.

She clasps them in her lap.

“Does that make your relationship complicated?”

.

.

.

She spends the rest of the day going through the motions. She’s back at the office at 3 and grinds her teeth when one of her co-workers brags about his latest one-night stand. She buys milk, tampons and peppermint gum on her way home and arrives at her apartment around 6. Pumpkin greets her with a happy yowl and sloppy doggy kisses. She takes him for a walk around the block, feels guilty because she doesn’t have enough time for him and takes a shower before she dials up a Moroccan restaurant and orders vegetable tagine with carrots, zucchini, chickpeas and ginger. After dinner, she goes to bed and scrolls through her Instagram feed until she falls asleep.

The next day is a Thursday and her boss has a tantrum because one of the interns brings him a flat white instead of a cappuccino. She tunes out the yelling and keeps her eyes trained on her laptop. Later, she finds the intern crying in the restroom and feels awkward because she doesn’t know what to do. She decides to say something encouraging, but it’s not very effective. In the evening, she has drum practice with Gwen. They mostly drink wine and talk about the NATO summit. When she’s back at her place, she thinks about her last session with Bruce and fumbles with her phone for a while.

On Friday, she receives a selfie from her parents. They’re currently island-hopping in Mauritius to celebrate their wedding anniversary. The picture shows them standing in front of the Blue Penny Museum and her dad has a sunburn. Her mom is wearing a straw hat and her braids look fantastic. She asks them if they’re having a good time and tries to read _Giovanni’s Room_ , but she can’t concentrate, so she doesn’t get very far.

On Saturday, she works from home and listens to Feist and Florence + the Machine. Her parents want to know if she’s doing all right. She assures them that she’s doing fine, does her laundry and has tomato soup for dinner.

On Sunday, she goes to feed the ducks and smiles when Pumpkin barks at his own reflection in the pond. She finishes _Giovanni’s Room_ and watches a documentary about Chet Baker. She fumbles with her phone again. She contemplates sending a text, but somehow that feels too impersonal. She presses the call button before she can talk herself out of it.

.

.

.

Her relationship with Peter isn’t complicated. It’s pretty simple, actually: they’re friends. Best friends even, at least from her point of view. They don’t see or talk to each other on a regular basis, but when they see or talk to each other their conversations are never boring or pretentious. She likes that and she likes Peter, too. She wouldn’t be (best) friends with him if she didn’t like him.

He’s a people person. He can be clumsy in social situations, but he has this weird boyish charm about him that makes up for his occasional blunders. Sometimes she wishes that she was a bit more like him and sometimes her envy gets the best of her and makes her words sting with the wrong kind of sarcasm. But Peter is her friend, so she tries not to snap at him when she’s feeling insecure. Her track record is okay, but there’s still room for improvement.

Peter is also very generous when it comes to forgiving people, and she has this theory that he wants to get along with literally every person that crosses his path and that he can’t function when he’s faced with interpersonal conflicts. According to her theory, this is why he’s compulsively polite, incapable of holding grudges and why he can’t say ‘no’ when someone asks him for a favour. She’s not sure of that makes him weak or tragically naïve or something else entirely.

.

.

.

“Hey, Em,” he croaks, and she pulls her knees to her chest as a reflex reaction to the sound of her nickname. He’s the only person she knows who calls her ‘Em’. Pumpkin, who’s been dozing at the foot of her bed, whines and scrambles over the duvet to snuggle up against her shins. She pats his head and tightens her grip on the phone.

“Hey.”

“How are you?”

“I’m okay,” she says. She takes a look at the clock on her nightstand. It’s two in the morning. She cringes, “ _Shit_ – did I wake you?”

“No, not at all,” he replies a little too lightly. His lie is followed by a hearty yawn and a self-deprecating laugh, “Sorry.”

She cringes again.

“I can call you in the morning if you wa – ”

“No, no, no! It’s fine, I promise” he cuts in immediately. A loud creak tells her that he’s hauling himself out of the bed. She isn’t surprised. He tends to pace around a lot when he’s on the phone, “It’s been a while. I’m glad you called, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

It’s quiet for a moment. While their conversations are never boring or pretentious, they can be a bit awkward from time to time. It’s not too bad, though. The silence is companionable. It allows her to drift back to the last time she saw him, which was one or two months ago. They had dinner at her place and watched one of his nerd movies. He was tired from his shift and fell asleep on her couch. She let him. She made him coffee in the morning while he used her shower and borrowed a t-shirt and a pair of sweats from her. They didn’t talk about her brother. It was strange but also nice. Before he left, Peter pulled her into a tight hug and thanked her for the coffee.

“I was wondering if you’d like to hang out next week?” she asks, curling her free arm around her knees, “I know you’re busy. But like you said, it’s been a while and I – uh – Pumpkin. He misses you. Very much.”

“Aw, I miss him, too.”

She smiles.

Peter is obsessed with her dog. He calls him a ‘good boy’ no matter what he does and pulls a small bag of treats out of his pocket every time they meet, causing Pumpkin to waggle his tail excitedly and thick threads of slobber to drip from his jowls. It’s the same with squeaky toys. There’s a box in her living room with the label _Silly Gifts Peter Bought for You Even Though He’s Always Broke_ on it. Of course, Pumpkin can’t read, so he has no idea that the _You_ stands for him. He probably doesn’t care about Peter’s financial limitations either, but she likes to imagine that Pumpkin understands that the box is a solid evidence that she’s not the only one who cares deeply about him.

“We could go to Astoria Park and take him for a walk. I was thinking about Tuesday evening if that’s okay with you.”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” he says, sounding very awake all of a sudden, “My shift ends at four and I need to change my clothes before I see you,” the line crackles for a second, “I can pick you up at your place around five?”

She closes her eyes.

About eight months ago, she would’ve picked him up at the hospital without second thought. She would’ve told him that it was fine, that he didn’t have to change his clothes if he didn’t want to and that she didn’t mind him smelling like all sorts of bodily fluids. He would’ve laughed and called her a weirdo and she would’ve laughed, too. But now she can’t go anywhere near the hospital and she can’t see him in his scrubs, so he does this thing where he tells her that he ‘needs’ to change his clothes before he goes to her place even though it means that he has to make a detour. It’s a sweet gesture. It’s sad that she has no idea how she’s supposed to express her gratitude without feeling like a charity case.

“Em? You still there?”

He sounds equal parts worried and amused.

“I’d like that,” she says.

.

.

.

Her relationship with Peter is simple. He’s a people person and she’s kind of a hermit. They have a similar taste in music and breakfast food and they’re both invested in her dog’s happiness. They met because her brother introduced them to each other. They met, they clicked, they formed a friendship. There’s nothing complicated about that.

For a while her brother had been there to witness all of that and then he died. There’s nothing complicated about that either.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick warning for those of you who get triggered by hospital stuff: in this chapter, peter has a short conversation with a cancer patient who is also a minor.
> 
> also, my medical knowledge is very limited, especially when it comes to the united states. i can barely get my head around how treatments are regulated here in germany.

**Fall 2014**

His relationship with MJ is complicated because he loves her in a way he can’t really describe. Like, her smile makes him feel like he can do anything and he wants to rage at the world when she’s sad. Simply put, his feelings for her don’t fit into categories like ‘romantic’ or ‘platonic’. They go deeper, which is why he finds his lack of words incredibly frustrating at times.

She’s an intellectual. She went to Dalton, then to Princeton and then to Columbia Journalism School. She’s fluent in French, German and Italian and has a vast knowledge of music and art history. She doesn’t look down on him because he’s ‘just’ a nurse. She believes that in a perfect world where corporate capitalism doesn’t exist, health care workers would be paid more than CEOs.

He loves her, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. He doesn’t how he’s supposed to love her and if it’s too much or not enough, so it’s complicated.

.

.

.

“We should do this more often,” she says, taking off her black teddy coat when they’re back in her apartment. She makes grabby hands at his own jacket and hangs it next to hers on the coat stand.

They don’t see each other much these days. He likes to blame it on his job or hers or the fact that she needs a lot of space or that they both have their own lives, but he knows it’s not about that. He could see her every day if he felt like he was allowed to, so it’s probably more about his own inhibitions than the trials and tribulations of being a working adult in one of the busiest, most expensive cities in the Western Hemisphere.

The walk was nice. They talked about books and movies while Pumpkin waddled ahead of them. The orange glow of the sunset made her curls look like dark copper springs and she was more talkative than usual. She seemed to be in a good mood, which automatically put him in a good mood as well.

“You want something to drink?”

She gives him her trademark smile (crooked and easy to miss if you don’t pay attention) when he tells her that a beer would be nice. He follows her down the hallway and into the living room and plops down on her couch as she vanishes off into the kitchen. Within seconds, Pumpkin places his head in his lap. He strokes the dog behind the ears and looks around to see if she changed something about her place since the last time he was here. She didn’t. She’s not the type of person that indulges in rearranging their home every other month.

Her place is not that different from Peter’s except that has more space, better thermal insulation and that he could never afford to live in her neighbourhood. He lives above a sex shop in a shittier part of town, approximately ten blocks away from where he spent his childhood. His living room is also the kitchen and his AC goes on strike every now and then because money doesn’t grow on trees.

“Thanks,” he says when she hands him a cool bottle of some craft beer he’s never heard of. She sits down next to him and takes a sip from her wine. She’s a wine person. She only drinks beer when she’s already drunk and even then, she wrinkles her nose at the taste of it. Still, she always has a beer in her fridge for some reason.

“I talked to my therapist about you.”

“Oh.”

“I guess I was nervous about calling you. We played through a couple of worst case scenarios so that I could feel like I was prepared.”

“Did your therapist pretend to be me?”

“Kind of.”

She doesn’t look at him, but that’s okay because she never really does. He holds the bottle with both hands, unsure if he’s supposed to be flattered or worried. He could be flattered because he’s important enough to her to become a topic in her therapy session, but at the same time he could be worried because the whole point of doing therapy is to talk about your problems, so maybe he isn’t important. Maybe he’s a problem. He frowns at his drink.

“You don’t have to be nervous about calling me, you know,” he says, “You can call me anytime you want. Prepared or not.”

She hums and smiles against the rim of her glass. She’s terribly beautiful. He’s a bit taken aback by what he said and how effortlessly the truth rolled off his tongue, but he’s too afraid to ask if she believes him.

.

.

.

They met at her brother’s birthday/New Year’s Eve party back in 2011. The place was packed, the playlist was a tribute to the 00s and he felt lost even though he knew most of the party guests from work. He’d already heard about MJ because Marvin had a habit of praising his little sister to the skies whenever he got the chance. To meet her in person was a completely different experience, though.

That night she was wearing black skinny jeans, a black ‘CBGB’ t-shirt and a black leather jacket. Her hair barely touched her shoulders and her pink eyeshadow sparkled a bit. She was in the kitchen, making herself a peanut butter sandwich, and she wasn’t interested in anything he had to say until he mentioned that his best friend, Ned, was an intern at Stark Industries in LA. That’s when ‘Umbrella’ spilled over into ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’ and she locked eyes with him for a second and asked him about his stance on global arms trade.

Whatever he said, she didn’t seem to hate or judge him for it. If anything, his answer launched a long debate on everything and nothing and he found that he liked talking to her whether it was about foreign politics, veganism, Tony Stark, the new Frank Ocean album or the correct way to organise a cutlery drawer. He found that he liked how they bounced back and forth between topics and how they agreed to disagree more often than he could count. He found that he liked the small smile she sent in his direction when he told her that he used to be a mathlete in high school, and he found that he liked that neither of them was eager to ‘win’ the conversation.

“You’re really smart,” she told him by the time ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ started to play, “I think I need a cigarette.”

He joined her outside on the balcony, feeling both drained and ecstatic. The new year was still an hour or so away and he watched her light a cigarette with a matchstick. He tried to convince her that she should quit smoking because it was bad for her, but she just smirked at him, called him a loser and told him that her brother was pestering her about it already and that she was going to quit for good once she’d completed her Master’s degree. She kept her word and went cold turkey a year and a half later.

.

.

.

The next evening, he’s at May’s place. He brings her a bottle of (cheap) wine and a (cheap) bouquet of marguerites because he likes to bring her (cheap) wine and (cheap) flowers from time to time. She makes a meat lasagna that looks kinda weird but tastes really good, and she’s delighted when he tells her that he and MJ went to the park together.

“How is she?”

“Uh – okay I guess,” he says, “She was nervous about calling me.”

“Did she tell you why?”

“No. She just said that she was nervous and that she talked about it with her therapist. They did a therapeutic role play, actually.”

His aunt remains silent for a moment. She likes MJ a lot because she thinks she has a good influence on him. Peter thinks so, too, but he also thinks that it should go both ways and that he should have a good influence on MJ. He can’t do that when there’s something about him that makes her nervous or reluctant to talk to him, though.

“Maybe she’s having a hard time at work,” May offers then, “Her boss isn’t exactly known for his sunny disposition.”

He scoffs.

“He’s an _asshole_. I don’t understand why she won’t quit already.”

Putting down her fork, May gives him a look that makes him feel awfully exposed. He tends to get uncharacteristically angry when he thinks about how MJ had always wanted to write about political issues and how all she does nowadays is crank out fluff pieces and gossip stories for the entertainment section of the _Daily Bugle_. He thinks it’s a fucking shame because MJ doesn’t care about celebrities. She cares about real people with real problems. She cares about people who are being killed, persecuted, exploited and ostracised because they’re not straight or Christian or male or white enough. He worries his lower lip between his teeth.

“She’s okay, but I don’t think she’s happy.”

“She’s been through a lot,” May says. Her smile is sad and wistful. It’s always sad and wistful when she’s thinking of Ben, “Give her some time.”

He nods and goes back to eating the lasagna, but now there’s something weighing in his stomach that keeps him from enjoying his meal. It stays with him until he’s back at his place where he turns on the TV and watches _It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia_ to distract himself. It’s a rerun of the episode in which the gang seeks advice from a therapist to figure out who’s supposed to do the dishes. The something in his stomach doesn’t really go away, so he calls Johnny and asks him if he’s up for a drink.

.

.

.

They meet at an Irish pub in Woodside half an hour later. Johnny’s all hyped up because he performed a top surgery today. He orders vodka shots and inhales a plate of onion rings in under five minutes. His excitement is contagious.

Johnny is a plastic surgeon. He finished his residency last year and he’s on a good path to become an expert on transgender procedures. They met on Peter’s first day at Metro General four years ago and they used to date for a while until they realised that they were better off as friends. There was never any bad blood between them after the break-up.

Sometimes Peter wonders if there would be any bad blood between him and MJ if they ever started dating and realised they were better off as friends a few months later. He sighs and knocks back his drink. He doesn’t like to think about that kind of stuff. He doesn’t like to brood over ‘what if’-scenarios when those ‘what if’-scenarios revolve around his relationship with MJ, but there are moments when he can’t help himself because he’s probably an idiot.

.

.

.

**me:** do u think theres a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone bc i think there is

**me:** like i love u and may but im not in love with you guys and i love mj but its different from how i love u and may so i guess that means im in love with her right

**ned:** are you drunk

**me:** yes

**me:** ily btw

**ned:** i love you too

**me:** yaaaaaaaaaaay!11!!!1!!111!!!!!1!!

**ned:** go to bed peter

**me:** ok

.

.

.

The number one reaction he gets from people when they find out that he’s a paediatric nurse is an awkward pause and something along the lines of ‘Oh wow, I guess you don’t want to have kids then’, which is funny because Peter definitively wants to have kids someday. It’s one of his main goals in life. Another main goal is taking care of sick kids when their parents can’t. People think that that makes him some kind of saint, but he doesn’t see it that way. It’s part of his job and he loves his job even if his job can be fucking soul-crushing at times.

“Whaddup, Ms Castle?” he singsongs upon entering patient room 15. He greets the girl in the bed with a grin and a two-fingered salute.

“Oh my God, why are you being so perky?” the girl grumbles, taking off her headphones with a dramatic roll of her eyes as he moves to the left side of her bed to check the drip. She’s wearing a mustard yellow beanie and a thick purple cardigan over her pale hospital gown, “It’s 9 pm on a Saturday. Aren’t you supposed to be, like, super devastated or something because you can’t go clubbing with your buddies tonight?”

He laughs at her.

“I don’t go clubbing. I never go clubbing. I like to clean my apartment and go over my finances because I’m a very responsible adult.”

“ _Sure_.”

“I also like to make sure that my favourite patient doesn’t spend the whole night watching make-up tutorials on YouTube instead of, you know, getting some sleep,” he says, “I mean, you’ve heard of ‘sleep’ before, right? It’s this really crazy thing where you lie down, close your eyes and let your body relax for a couple of hours.”

She rolls her eyes again, but he doesn’t miss the hint of her smile. The sight of it warms his heart. Life hasn’t been kind to Lisa Castle. She lost her mother when she was nine and was diagnosed with leukaemia this summer. They diagnosed the cancer early on, but it’s aggressive, so her chances of surviving this are neither high nor low at the moment.

This is where the fucking soul-crushing aspect of his job comes in: Lisa is a 12-year-old kid and she shouldn’t have to be here because she shouldn’t have leukaemia to begin with. She should be healthy. She should be able to go to school and pine after her crush of the week and attend school dances or whatever. She should be at home with her little brother and her dad and go to her figure skating lessons with her best friend, Leo.

“You’re hilarious,” she deadpans.

“Oh, I know,” he beams at her, “I should have my own show.”

“You mean like Amy Schumer?”

His face falls.

“Okay, now you’re just being hurtful.”

She giggles and his face creases into a smile. Being the benevolent and extremely cool grown-up that he is, he lets her watch her YouTube videos for another thirty minutes before he comes to check on her again and finds her snoring into her pillow.

.

.

.

It’s past midnight and he’s on his second coffee break when MJ sends him a picture of Pumpkin. It’s actually a picture of Pumpkin’s butt because he has his head buried in his toy box. He responds with an onslaught of heart emojis and the corners of his mouth turn upwards when she asks him if he wants to join her for another walk in the morning. He should tell her that he can’t because he needs to sleep, but he ends up doing the exact opposite.

“What are you smiling about?” Claire asks him from her spot at the reception counter, nursing a cup of piping hot coffee of her own.

He puts his phone away and blinks at her like a deer caught in the headlights. He likes Claire. She’s really good at making fun of the residents, especially the ones who think they know everything even though they totally don’t, and she can drink him and Johnny under the table.

“Nothing.”

She snorts and raises a brow at him. He ignores her and drinks his coffee. He thinks about MJ. Good thing he has a spare set of regular clothes in his locker.

.

.

.

He wasn’t there when it happened. He wasn’t there when Dr Marvin Jones, the star of Metro General’s Paediatric Surgery Residency programme, died from a severe TBI. He was there when it was already over.

He was there at the funeral, shivering in the cold with his head held down. He was there at the reception, sharing a table with his colleagues while MJ sat with her family on the opposite side of the room. He was there, watching her from afar, and he could feel everything: sorrow because his friend was dead, guilt because he hadn’t been there to help him, anger because none of this was fair and a desperate kind of sympathy that squeezed his heart and squashed it like an insect because Marvin’s death was going to change MJ irrevocably.

And it’s not like he doesn’t get it. He knows from experience that grief can change and fuck you up in ways you wouldn’t believe. It can make you burn with anger. It can freeze you from within. It can make you live life to the fullest or spend it in fear of losing yet another person you love. It can leave you with a sore throat and it can render you speechless. It can make you restless, it can slow you down to the point where you can’t move at all. It can make you bleed all over the place until you think you’re dying, too.


	3. Chapter 3

**Fall 2014**

Her mom is an art dealer and her dad teaches European Literature at NYU. They’re rich but not stinking rich. She didn’t grow up like the characters on _Gossip Girl_. She didn’t have a nanny or a chauffeur or a Polish housekeeper who reluctantly supported her in her petty schemes. She grew up in a medium-sized Tudor-style house in Kew Gardens, happy and scheme-free because she had her parents, her brother and a grey Ragamuffin cat named Penelope.

Still, with her parents being rich but not stinking rich, she never had to rely on loans or scholarships or other forms of financial aid to pay for college. That didn’t stop her from serving overpriced frozen lattes at a coffee shop when she was a sophomore at Princeton, though. Back then, rumour had it that one of the shift-supervisors was withholding tips from the non-white employees, so MJ played along for a couple of weeks before she wrote a scathing article for her blog. The story created quite a stir on and off campus. In the end, the shift-supervisor got fired and a Dreamer was hired in her place while MJ started writing weekly essays on racism and labour policy for the _Daily Princetonian_.

There are days when she misses being that person. There are days when she misses writing for her blog, days when she misses all that drive and determination that used to propel her forward on her never-ending quest to go toe-to-toe with racist, money-grubbing assholes, but there are also days when getting out of the bed takes her way longer than it should.

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**loser:** happy halloween

**loser:** fyi im on coffee break so im totally allowed to text you

**loser:** also what r u doing rn

**me:** i’m in a dorm with my friend/drum teacher and her boyfriend and we’re doing a horror movie marathon. there’s also a rave party going on in the hallway. i feel very old.

**loser:** youre 26

**loser:** thats far from old

**me:** you’re just saying that because you’re also 26.

**loser:** i dont know what u r talking about

**loser:** u can explain it to me when were at the park tmrw?

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He gets to hold the leash because he likes to pretend that Pumpkin is actually his dog. The leaves crackle under their feet and their breaths leave them in puffy clouds. It’s cold and foggy today and there are not too many people outside. She used to hate this time of the year when she was a kid, but now she can see the beauty of it.

“Ned’s gonna be in the city for Thanksgiving,” he tells her.

“That’s nice.”

“He wants to meet for drinks. You should join us.”

“I wouldn’t want to disturb your tearful reunion.”

He gasps dramatically.

“We’re men,” he says, “Our reunion will be very manly.”

“You mean like last time when you two hugged and refused to let go of each other for a whole minute?”

She doesn’t have to look at him to know that he’s smiling at her. His bromance with Ned is the stuff of legends. They went to middle and high school together and Peter was bummed when Ned moved to California to study and start his career there, but the geographical distance has never done any damage to their friendship. It’s kinda cute, how they call each other every week and talk like little old ladies on the phone or over Skype.

“Seriously, though. I’m sure he’d love to see you again.”

She makes an indecisive noise and it’s nice that he doesn’t try to get a final answer out of her. It’s no secret that she likes to keep to herself and indulge in her ‘me time’ whenever she can.

They walk on in silence and she shoots a glance at him every now and then. For Peter, Halloween means trick-or-treating hospital-style and letting the kids paint his face. Judging by the faint smudges of black, white and yellow on his jaw he made his rounds as a tiger last night. She smirks and tucks her hands into the pockets of her coat.

“I want to ask you a question,” he says when they pass the empty pool.

“Okay.”

“You don’t have to give me an answer if you don’t want to, but there was something you said when you told me that you talked to your therapist about me. It kinda stuck with me and I don’t know how to feel about it.”

She frowns.

“ _Okay_.”

“You said you were nervous about calling me,” he begins. Her hands become clammy, so she balls them into fists, “But were you, like, nervous in a negative way?”

She stops walking and tilts her head at him. The tips of his ears turn red, and it’s hard to tell if this reaction is brought on by the weather or his perennial fear of saying the wrong thing and hurting people’s feelings by accident. He shouldn’t have to worry about the latter, not with her because she believes that he could never hurt her and it’s probably bad that he has this kind of power over her. She shakes her head to get rid of the thought.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She watches his tongue dart out to wet the left corner of his mouth. His lips are very pink. She clenches her jaw. She’d rather have him smile at her because that would be normal. Steering her gaze back to the ground, she kicks at some leaves. The heel of her boot scrapes over the gravel and she can hear him clear his throat.

“Like, were you nervous because you didn’t think I was gonna pick up? Because I meant what I said. You can call me anytime you want. I didn’t just say that to make you feel better,” his ears adopt a darker shade of red, “I’m always gonna pick up, Em. Just – Just not when I’m at work. In that case, I’m gonna call you back. Obviously. You know that, right?”

He fiddles with the leash, prompting Pumpkin to circle his legs until he’s tied up at his knees. He lets out a breathy laugh and does a little shimmy with his legs to wriggle free. It’s an opportunity to bide some time and take in the trees behind him. They’re a perfect mix of yellow, orange and reddish brown.

She remembers how mortified she was after she told him about her session with Bruce and how she felt when he said that she could call him anytime. How she wasn’t exactly surprised but rather moved by his words and the sincerity he had poured into them, and how she didn’t know what to say in return.

“Yeah, I know that,” she says because it’s pretty much the same today: she doesn’t know what to say because she’s so overwhelmed by the deepness of their bond that she hardly says anything.

They fall back into step and he laughs when she kicks up more leaves, so maybe she doesn’t have to say much. Maybe stating the obvious is enough. It could be enough, she thinks. After all, his face softens and his lips, still very pink, stretch into a smile that makes her feel both embarrassed and amused. After all, there has always been this silent understanding between them.

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Gwen invites her to a thing and she’s adamant about not going until Bruce tells her that going would be a great exercise in leaving her comfort zone. She rolls her eyes because he’s being a friendly, manipulative shithead (he knows that she’s competitive and that she can’t back down from a challenge even if she tried), but being a friendly, manipulative shithead is an essential part of his job, so in the end, she relents. She texts Gwen to tell her she’s going to be there and sprinkles in some jokes about that _Whiplash_ movie that came out last month for good measure.

**gwen:** you’re one to talk.

**gwen:** your boss actually looks like j. k. simmons.

She shudders.

**me:** i know. the physical resemblance is uncanny.

They exchange a couple of memes and then Gwen informs her that she can bring a plus one if she wants. She says she’ll think about it and turns on the news and feels a pang in her chest when it is announced that the officer who killed Michael Brown Jr back in August will not be indicted. She grits her teeth, grabs her laptop and writes until dawn.

It’s been years since she’s written anything for her blog and it’s thrilling, it’s frightening. She has a good cry when she’s done and doesn’t check the statistics or the comment section for a whole week.

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She has drinks with Peter and Ned at a dive bar in Jackson Heights the night before Thanksgiving. She had an exhausting day at the office, so she orders herself a Piña Colada and offers Peter the decorative slice of pineapple that’s attached to her glass. The music is okay. It’s the kind of average indie background pop her brother would certainly complain about if he weren’t dead.

Sipping his drink, Ned tells them about this incredible girl he met on his flight. Her name is Betty. She’s from Staten Island but she moved to Pasadena a couple of years ago. She’s a realtor, she’s super smart and Ned fell in love with her over his fruit cobbler. They exchanged numbers at the baggage claim area and now Ned is in a crisis because how long does he have to wait until it’s appropriate for him to call her and ask if she’d like to go out with him?

“He’s a mess,” Peter murmurs next to her while Ned continues to gush over Betty’s sharp intellect and her beautiful blue eyes, “It’s cute, though, right?”

She smiles around her straw and shoots him a look to tell him that she agrees with him. The dim light does wonders to the bags under his eyes. He has his arm draped over the booth they’re sharing and his mouth is curled into a lazy grin. He smells like bad coffee and he’s very warm. He holds her gaze for a moment before he reaches for his beer. The movement causes his arm to shift and settle around her shoulders. He doesn’t seem to notice and she doesn’t care enough to tell him to put his arm away.

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She tried to kiss him once, shortly after the funeral. They were at a bar and some asshole decided to put ‘Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp’ on the jukebox. The song made her eyes sting because it made her think of her brother. George Harrison was his favourite Beatle, not only because he was the actual genius of the band but because his solo work was the ‘real shit’.

She told Peter about that and then she wiped her nose with her sleeve. She was sad and drunk, so she tried to kiss him, but she missed his mouth by an inch and kissed his chin instead of his lips. It was humiliating, but Peter didn’t make fun of her. He let her down gently, his smile warm and a little strained. She can’t remember what he said to her, but it probably made a lot of sense.

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It’s the first Thanksgiving without her brother. Her dad makes his famous pumpkin pot pie and her mom puts on the Charles Mingus album MJ got her for her birthday back in April. They’re miserable, the three of them. They discuss Albert Camus and Romare Bearden and take turns crying because the fourth seat at the table is empty and her brother isn’t there to call them out for being a bunch of super snobs.

She goes to his old room while her parents take Pumpkin for a walk around the neighbourhood. It’s a rather small room with blue walls, dark wooden flooring and an alcove that overlooks the driveway. Her brother used to sit there in the winter and cram for his SATs or listen to ‘Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing’ with his eyes closed and a smile on his face. He was a super snob himself when it came to music. He considered his taste to be excellent and used to lecture his friends on what they should be listening to if they wanted him to take them seriously. It’s basically how Peter got hooked on Kasabian and 60s rock.

He was always so proud of her and he wanted her to be happy all the time. He would put on Earth, Wind & Fire when she was having a bad day and miss every note of ‘September’ on purpose because he knew it would make her laugh. He would give her pep talks when she was worried about her grades and smile at her when she came back home with a perfect score. He would sit her down and tell her that being an introvert didn’t mean that there was something wrong with her.

He was caring and fiercely protective of the people he considered friends and family, but he wasn’t perfect. He preferred cutting people out of his life over hearing them out and forgiving them for their mistakes, and he was arrogant like pretty much every other surgical resident. He could be cold and calculating if he wanted to be, but he was her brother and she loved him very much.

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“No,” she says when she’s about to head back home.

“It’s a gift.”

She shakes her head at the 100-dollar bill her mom is holding out to her, and looks down the hallway to find her dad saying goodbye to Pumpkin with lots of baby talk.

“I don’t want it,” she hisses then, and for a second her mom looks genuinely hurt, “It’s just – I’m not in trouble or anything. I’m okay.”

“I know. Doesn’t mean I don’t want you to treat yourself every once in a while.”

She splutters.

“Treat myse – Have you been watching _Parks and Recreation_ again?”

Her mom grins at her.

“It’s a lovely show. Your dad does a very good impression of this Ron Swanson guy by the way.”

“Okay, but I don’t need your money to treat myself. As you know, I make a hilarious salary at the _Bugle_ ,” she says, trying not to sound or feel like a sell-out, “I’m fine, really.”

Her mom looks at her and puts a hand on her cheek. Her eyes, her smile – it’s all pain and grief, but there’s a smidge of hope that one day things will be easier again. MJ can see it. She can put it into words but she can’t feel it, not yet.

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**me:** happy thanksgiving. are you and may having a good time?

**loser:** happy thanksgiving!

**loser:** were good. we tried to make a turkey dinner but we fucked it up so now were having pad thai

**loser:** may says hello btw

**me:** tell her i want to see her again.

**loser:** ok but what about me

**me:** we had drinks together less than 24 hours ago.

**loser:** so???

**loser:** anyways how was dinner w/ ur parents

**me:** sad.

**loser:** do u want to talk about it

**me:** yes.

**loser:** ill call you in 5

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Miles and Gwen got together last winter and they’re kind of a power couple. She’s the best drummer of her year and dreams of jamming with Cindy Blackman one day while he works part-time as a bartender at some hipster bar in Brooklyn when he’s not busy playing the trombone or making heart-eyes at his girlfriend. They love board games and b-movies and they were friends long before they started dating.

A part of her misses being in a relationship, another part of her is scared shitless by the sheer thought of opening up to another person, but then she thinks about Peter and how easy it is for her to open up to him, so maybe she just needs to find someone like him. She asks Bruce if she’s making sense the next time she sees him and his little frown tells her that she’s not making sense.

“I’m just wondering,” he says after a moment, taking off his glasses to clean them with the hem of his bulky sweater, “Why do you need to find someone like Peter when Peter is already there?”

She blinks.

“Because Peter and I are friends.”

“And you don’t think you two could be more than that.”

She swallows.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She needs to leave.

“Because I don’t want to.”

“You don’t want him to be more than your friend?”

“No,” she says, half in shock because she sounds like she’s going to cry. It’s ridiculous. Talking about Peter shouldn’t make her sound like she’s going to cry. Talking about Peter should make her sound happy. She looks at Bruce for a second and then at the piles of papers on his desk, “I don’t want to think he could be more than my friend.”

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It’s not like she’s never thought about it. It’s not like she doesn’t see him as the humble, good-natured and incredibly lovable person that he is. It’s just that she wants to be sure about this.

She wants to be sure that attempting to change things between them and potentially ruining their friendship forever is something she’s willing to risk because right now, it’s not. Right now, losing him would be the worst thing that could happen to her.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy holidays everyone! i hope you’re all well and safe :)
> 
> just so you know: this chapter contains mild spoilers for _whiplash_ (2014) and _anna karenina_ (2012).

**Winter 2014**

Lisa’s dad is a creature of habit. He visits her every day. He arrives at 3.30 sharp and leaves exactly two hours later, but not without pressing a kiss to her forehead and telling her to listen to the medical staff. He’s built like a Mack truck and looks like he could end your life with his pinkie, and the fact that he runs a puppy day-care centre in Brooklyn doesn’t make him any less intimidating.

An essential part of Frank’s routine is to bring various people with him to the hospital. On Mondays, he brings Frank Jr who doesn’t really understand what’s going on with his sister because he’s only five years old. On Tuesdays, he brings Curtis, Lisa’s godfather, who lost his right leg in Afghanistan. On Wednesdays, he brings Frank Jr again, and on Thursdays, he brings Leo.

On Fridays, Frank brings a tall blonde woman who may or may not be his girlfriend. She has a soft spot for high heels and pencil skirts, and she strokes Lisa’s back when she has to throw up after chemo. Lisa likes her a lot. (“I wouldn’t mind if Karen and my dad were dating,” she tells Peter one evening after Frank and his maybe-girlfriend have already left the ward, “But my dad’s kinda dumb, you know. He has literally no game.”)

On the weekends, Frank comes alone, stays a little longer and he always brings the same book with him. It’s a children’s book with a bear and its cub and boxes with chocolate chip cookies on the cover. Lisa pretends that she doesn’t want Frank to read it to her because she’s _almost 13 and basically an adult now, seriously, Dad, this is so embarrassing_ , but the book is clearly special to her.

Sometimes, when he’s making rounds, Peter stops at Lisa’s door for a moment and listens to Frank as he reads out the first rhyme. He’d be lying if he said that he knew what ‘One batch, two batch, penny and dime’ really meant, but he likes to think that it’s something sacred, something that only members of the Castle family understand. Another way of saying, ‘I love you’ maybe or a secret code for ‘Everything’s gonna be all right’.

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On the first weekend in December, he’s bobbing up and down in a sea of socialites and renowned music professors. It’s the annual Juilliard Christmas Concert at Alice Tully Hall. MJ asked him to be his plus one, so of course he said he’d go and now he’s wearing a rented suit (sans the tie) that’s at least one size too big for him and the label on the inside of the collar of his shirt keeps tickling the back of his neck. He’s feeling giddy and a little out of place.

“Gwen owes me,” MJ grumbles while they’re waiting for the concert to begin, “I can’t wait to get out of this stupid dress and back into my sweatpants.”

He blows out a chuckle and digs his fingers into the armrest of his seat, eyes set on the puke green stage curtains.

“Are you telling me you _don’t_ enjoy hanging out with old white people?”

Her laughter makes his stomach swoop and he turns his head in her direction to catch a glimpse of her face. She put on minimal make-up and swapped her tiny silver earrings for a pair of golden hoops. Her curls are all over the place and she has a certain glow about her he finds hard not to notice. Also: her dress isn’t stupid. It’s a dark grey knitted thing with long sleeves and a turtleneck, and the hem stops right above her knees. It’s not stupid at all. It goes well with her tights and Chelsea boots and it’s snug in all the right places. He ends up giving her the elevator eyes for a second and feels appropriately weird about it, so he makes the conscious decision not to look at her during the concert.

The motto of the night is _Modern Jazz Standards_ , so the band mostly performs new interpretations of old classics like ‘Cherokee’, ‘Epistrophy’ and ‘All the Things You Are’. They save an extra-long version of ‘Caravan’ for the grand finale, which MJ finds hilarious for some reason.

“It’s like they’re trying to imitate the ending scene of the movie,” she tells him. There’s a soft giggle in her voice and he’s still clutching the armrest. In fact, he’s clutching it harder now.

“What movie?”

“The one where Miles Teller plays a drum student and becomes obsessed with his sadistic conductor. Gwen and I went to see it last month. It’s a good movie, but it’s not a _feel-good_ movie. Actually, it’s kinda depressing and stressful to watch.”

“Oh.”

He zeroes in on the stage again. Gwen’s in the zone, her lips pursed as she works the kit while her boyfriend rounds off his solo with an elaborate trill. Peter doesn’t know either of them very well, but it’s clear as day that these two make a great couple.

“They’re killing it,” MJ whispers with a wide, toothy grin. She leans into his space a bit and he gets a whiff of her perfume. It’s a nice, flowery scent. He clears his throat and thinks about how much she hates these types of events.

“Do you still regret that you came here?”

She smiles.

“Not at all. Just look at them. They’re perfect together,” she says, “They’re, like, literally in tune.”

He blinks down at the armrest where her hand is resting next to his. There’s an impulse to touch her, to link their pinkies or run his fingers along her knuckles, but then it’s time for Gwen’s solo and MJ leans forward, lifting her hand from the armrest to cover her mouth. She stifles a laugh while her eyes become a bit glassy. She looks lovely. He realises, with a flex of his fingers and another funny flutter in his stomach, that it’s been ages since he’s seen her this happy.

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He has breakfast with Ned on Skype the next morning. They talk a bit about Ned’s current work project, a so-called ‘arc reactor’ that could potentially revolutionise the entire renewable energy market, and it’s not that hard for Peter to keep up with the engineering mumbo-jumbo. He’s always had a thing for the natural sciences. He grew up religiously watching _Bill Nye the Science Guy_ and he firmly believes that some equations are sexier than others. (Take Euler’s identity, for example. There’s a reason people say it’s the mathematical version of a Shakespearean sonnet.)

Still, he never had the interest (or the money) to work in the industry. He wanted to become a nurse since he was eight years old. More precisely since he lost his parents in a car accident and spent the entire night at the New York Presbyterian, snuggled up against Nurse Diaz who patched him up and read to him while the surgeons in the OR tried everything to save his mom and dad.

The best thing is that he’s pretty happy with where he is right now. He’s not sure if Ned is feeling the same way about his job because by the time they’re done talking about physics and biomechanics, Ned starts whining about his latest conference call with a raving and rambling Tony Stark, and Peter can’t contain his laugh any longer.

“You talk about him like he’s a hyperactive toddler,” he says in-between two bites of his toast. He went a little overboard with the strawberry jam, but it’s still good. Ned groans into his ‘I Heart NY’ coffee cup. (It was an intentionally cheesy parting gift from his little sister, Marisol.)

“Yeah, well, he _is_ a hyperactive toddler. Like, he’s a genius, _duh_ , but he’s a handful. Last time he came to visit the lab, he was wearing pink sunglasses and SpongeBob pyjama pants. He fell asleep during Harley’s presentation and he smelled like a distillery.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Trust me, it wasn’t. Pepper looked like she wanted to murder him, but I think she’s just worried. He’s been a mess since they broke up,” Ned says, “Needless to say that Beck was having the time of his life.”

That last bit is delivered with an unmistakable touch of disdain. After all, Quentin Beck is the director of Stark Industries’ R&D department and a world-famous blowhard. He transferred from Hammer Industries in 2010 and takes great pleasure in gaining laurels when it’s actually his team that’s doing most of the work. The press doesn’t like him, his team doesn’t like him and Ned doesn’t like him, so Peter feels obligated not to like him either even though he’ll probably never meet the man in person.

He can’t imagine what it would be like to work for someone like Tony Stark or Quentin Beck. Sure, Metro General’s medical director, Dr Strange, is kind of an asshole. The new head of paediatrics, Dr Wilson, however, is a pretty cool guy. He used to be an Army doc and he’s funny but also 100% dedicated to his job. The kids love him. They think he’s an actual superhero, which is why they call him ‘Cap’.

He sighs. He can’t imagine what it would be like to work for someone like J. Jonah Jameson either. According to MJ, he’s a choleric who hires POC to boost his public image and pays them a fortune so that they keep their mouths shut and don’t complain about the fact that the _Bugle_ is one of the most conservative newspapers on the entire damn planet. (Why she won’t quit is still beyond him, no matter how many times May tells him that it’s not his business.)

“How are things with Betty?” he asks then to change the subject for both his own and his best friend’s benefit. As expected, Ned takes the bait with a very dreamy sigh. Apparently, he and Betty went to see Chelsea Peretti at the Comedy Store and had dinner at a fancy Italian place in Los Feliz. They didn’t kiss, but it was a magical night nonetheless and they’re going to have lunch together next week.

“How are things with MJ?”

The question sends him into a brief panic and he coughs around a clump of sickly sweet toast. He doesn’t appreciate the implications of the question or the conspirational smile that’s about to take over Ned’s face, so he tells him about the concert and how stupid he felt in his suit.

He doesn’t tell him that it was a date because it wasn’t a date, and he doesn’t tell him about MJ’s dress or that he wanted to hold her hand at the end of the concert. He doesn’t tell him about Brad, the non-sadistic conductor of the band who MJ couldn’t stop talking to at the after party either. If he did, Ned would assure him that he had nothing to worry about because the underdog always gets the girl and _what kind of name is ‘Brad’ anyway_ , and then Peter would have to explain that there’s no girl for him to get and that making fun of people’s names to make them look bad is actually kinda lame.

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For the next two and a half weeks he goes to work, has dinner with May and sighs in relief because Lisa is making progress.

He also hooks up with a guy he meets at some bar. A couple of days later, he hooks up with a woman he meets at another bar because that’s kinda what he always does when there’s radio silence between him and MJ: he hooks up with random people and he doesn’t see MJ or go to the park with her and he’s okay with that until he isn’t.

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**mj:** happy hanukkah!

**me:** thanks :)

**me:** how are u

**mj:** i’m okay. just busy.

**mj:** what about you?

**me:** i need to buy a present for may

**me:** can u help me

**mj:** it’s 4 days until christmas. have you ever heard of time management?

**me:** is that a yes

**mj:** yes.

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“So, what did you have in mind?” MJ asks him, tapping the spines of _Shanghai Girls_ and _The Signature of All Things_ with her index finger as they weave through the ‘S’ section of the ‘Historical Fiction’ aisle, “Is she still in love with Flann O’Brien?”

“No, she’s more into Russian classics now.”

She nods and waltzes off into the direction they came from, the heels of her steel-capped boots clacking against the hardwood floor. He follows her after a short moment of confusion and is careful not to bump into the piles of books that are stacked against the overflowing shelves. They’re at the ‘Sanctum Sanctorum Books & Antiques Shop’ and he’s nervous because this is MJ’s happy place and even though he’s been here with her many times before, knowing that this is where she is most comfortable never fails to make him feel insanely privileged.

It’s a palace of sorts, filled to the brim with rare gems and everything mainstream literature has to offer. It started out as a safe haven for people with an academic interest in East Asian culture and soon became a hotspot for New York’s most versatile readers. The owner, Mr Wong, is a very silent individual. More often than not, he can be found behind the cash register, rolling cigarettes or thumbing through literary magazines with pinched brows and his tinted glasses sitting on the tip of his nose. He doesn’t tolerate pets in his store, so they had to leash Pumpkin to the bike stand at the entrance.

The funny (or frustrating) thing about the ‘Sanctum’ is that it’s a perfect example of organised chaos. There are areas dedicated to genres, forms, authors, movements and countries of origin, but the mind-boggling amount of aisles and floors makes it impossible to rely on that system alone. Unless you’re MJ and know this monster of a bookstore like the back of your hand of course.

“You want to buy her this one,” she says once they make it to the other end of the ground floor, pushing a Norton Critical edition of _Crime and Punishment_ against his chest, “It has a ‘backgrounds and sources’ and a ‘criticism’ section. She’ll get the full Dostoevsky experience in one book.”

He weighs the book in one hand and scratches the top of his head with the other. He’s not illiterate or anything like that. He just prefers comic books and science blogs over pages upon pages about misery and broken hearts.

“What about _Anna Karenina_?” he asks, “It’s less depressing, right?”

She scoffs.

“ _Anna Karenina_ is for romantic airheads.”

“But you read it anyway.”

“I read everything.”

“Fair point.”

“Look, if you want May to get into Tolstoy, you should go for _The Death of Ivan Ilyich_. Don’t even think about buying her _War and Peace_. It’s basic as hell and we both know she deserves more than that,” she pauses and sighs like explaining this to him takes a strenuous effort “Also: Russian literature is _meant_ to be depressing. _Anna Karenina_ is no exception of that. The only storyline that doesn’t make you want to cry yourself to sleep is Levin’s. And he’s kind of a loser.”

He smiles at her. He loves it when she’s in her element, loves it when he gets to listen to her rant about the things that really matter to her. He loves it because it makes her shine even brighter than she usually does.

“You called me a loser when we first met,” he says then.

She blinks, the corners of her mouth submitting to a small upwards curl.

"You remember that?"

“’Course I do.”

“Huh.”

Suddenly, their roles are switched. Like, her smile grows in radiance while his dies a slow death, only to be replaced by hot cheeks and a slack jaw. He peers at her lips and his stomach is doing the swoopy, fluttery thing again. She could’ve slapped him or kissed him or told him that _50 Shades of Grey_ was an outstanding example of excellent writing. The outcome would have been the same. He would have looked at her like he’s looking at her right now: wide-eyed, wonderstruck and maybe a little terrified.

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.

In the evening he watches the 2012 remake of _Anna Karenina_ starring Keira Knightley and the dude from _Kick-Ass_ who looks really hot despite the moustache. It’s very artsy and very theatre-y. MJ would like it because she likes artsy, theatre-y stuff. She once took him to a performance show where two Eastern European women spent 90 minutes throwing food at each other and dancing to Tears for Fears. He didn’t know what the message of the performance was or if he was allowed to laugh, so he tried to look intrigued.

He stops the movie when Kitty and Levin get together after confessing their feelings through alphabetic cubes. It’s a cute scene, but he can’t handle it right now. He can’t handle anything right now. He’s too worked up and he doesn’t even know why. He goes to bed and thinks about love and he can’t sleep. He tosses and turns and he totally doesn’t think about MJ or her pretty smile when he ends up masturbating at 2 am.

.

.

.

**ned:** so betty and i kissed and it was amazing

**ned:** we’re gonna spend new year’s eve in lake tahoe together

**ned:** do u think we’re rushing things?

**ned:** because i don’t think we are

**ned:** happy belated hanukkah & merry early christmas btw <3

**me:** DUDE

.

.

.

The day before Christmas Eve, when Lisa is finally released from the hospital (because the worst part is over, thank fucking God), Frank shoves a basket full of cookies and candy bars into his hands. Peter doesn’t really know what to say or how to react, so he stares at the basket for a moment and blushes when Claire starts chuckling behind him. When he’s done doing that, he just stutters.

“Uh – ”

“Just – thanks,” Frank grunts, glaring daggers at the floor with the kind of laser focus that must have come in handy back when he was an active Marine, “What you did for her – all of you – I appreciate it.”

He still doesn’t really know what to say or how to react, but then he looks at Frank and he smiles because what he sees is a brutish-looking guy who’s bad with words and loves his kids more than he loves life itself. What he sees is a man who, according to his daughter, has literally no game but suddenly stands taller and even smirks a little when Karen squeezes his arm affectionately.

He smiles because he can relate to Frank. At least on some level: he’s bad with words, too, and he also has a friend who makes him stand taller.

.

.

.

The thing about MJ is that the way he cares about her is fundamentally different from the way he cares about other people, and he’s perfectly aware of how cruel he’s being to May, Ned, his colleagues and the kids at the ward by admitting that. He’s perfectly aware of how insane it is to love someone like he loves her.

He’s perfectly aware of other things, too. Like, he’s perfectly aware that his feelings for her will catch up with him eventually, that they’re seeping through the cracks already and that one day, he’ll have to face them and figure out what ‘complicated’ really means.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy new year! here’s hoping 2021 will suck a little less.
> 
> quick warning: this is probably the saddest chapter yet but let me tell you that the next chapter will be much 'fluffier' :)

**Winter 2014**

The ride to Sunnyside is a nightmare. People are loud and tipsy and they keep stumbling into each other. By the time she’s off the train, she feels like she’s going to have a panic attack, so she power-walks to May’s place with her headphones on, blasting ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ because there’s something about Frank Sinatra’s voice that calms her down like nothing else. She arrives 15 minutes before midnight in galaxy yoga pants and a huge beige knitted sweater. She tied her hair into a knot because it’s a little greasy and her dark green nail polish is chipped.

Neither May nor the other guests seem to be bothered with how crazy she looks but that’s probably because Peter taps her shoulder and guides her into his old room as soon as he sees her. They don’t turn the lights on, they just sit there: he in his desk chair and she cross-legged on his bed. He fiddles with a loose thread on the left sleeve of his sweater for a while before he decides to ask the million-dollar question.

“Where’s Pumpkin?”

“At my grandma’s,” she says, “She lives in Roslyn. It’s a little less noisy there.”

He nods.

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

She looks around and makes out a row of ARML trophies in the dark. It’s not the first time she’s here. Back in the day, she used to be a frequent guest at May’s dinner table. It often ended with the two of them teaming up to make fun of Peter or to talk about postmodern literature. If misery were poison, May would be the antidote. She’s a travel agent and very adamant about keeping her nephew’s room exactly how it was when he moved out. She’s a bit like MJ’s parents when it comes to preserving a certain sense of nostalgia in her home.

“I have a present for you. For Christmas or Hanukkah. Or both,” she says, unpretzeling her limbs and walking over to the desk where she dropped her trusty backpack. She fishes out a brown paper bag, hands him the bag and watches his eyes go round when he’s presented with the red-and-blue scarf she knitted for him.

“You made that for me?” he asks, almost like a child as his fingers skim over the woollen texture. She opted for a soft but thick wool blend and came up with the pattern herself. Peter’s smile and the quick, disbelieving twitch of his brows make it hard to breathe for a moment. She sits down on the bed again.

“Yup.”

“Thank you.”

His smile becomes bigger and brighter and she has to look away.

“I have a gift for May, too. It’s a book.”

“Is it _Anna Karenina_?”

“Yes.”

A beat passes before his laugh rings throughout the room and she loves the sound of it so much that she wants to join him but the people in the living room start counting down from ten and if things were different, MJ would be with her brother and they would be counting down from ten together right now. If things were different, her brother would have turned 30 today.

“Fuck.”

The fireworks go off and she leans back until her shoulder blades hit the mattress. She stares at the ceiling and the splashes of light and colour that explode there. She’s being dramatic and she doesn’t like that, so she lets her eyes fall close.

“Happy New Year,” she says, hardly recognising her own voice because it’s too detached and croaky. The cheers from the living room and the noise from outside wash over her like a tidal wave.

“Happy New Year, Em.”

He wraps his hands around her ankles and pulls her feet into his lap. She remembers that she’s wearing mismatching socks and that it’s been two days since she took a shower. She covers her face with her hands and she wants to cry but she can’t.

.

.

.

**Winter 2015**

Brad wants to know if she’s up for a screening of _Un Rêve Plus Long Que la Nuit_ at Anthology Film Archives. They’ve been texting sporadically since Gwen introduced them to each other after the concert (“You’re totally allowed to bang him by the way.” – “ _Wow_.” – “But you have to tell me and Miles about it. We have a bet going on.” – “What kind of bet?” – “You don’t want to know.”). 

He is nice. He grew up in Gold Coast and his Australian accent is thick even though he’s been living in New York for five years now. He likes Sonny Clark and cares a lot about his Chinese-Malaysian roots. He started out as a concert pianist (“How very stereotypically Asian of me, right?”) but now he’s a conductor in training. He also has cheekbones.

He insists on walking her home when the movie is over, so they take the train and talk about art cinema. Brad has very strong opinions on the Nouvelle Vague. He believes that only the French know how to make good movies and uses _Fahrenheit 451_ as an example to support this argument. She looks at him from the corner of her eye and realises that he’s the kind of pretentious that doesn’t turn you off completely.

She can tell that he wants to make her come, preferably while he’s still inside of her. Of course that doesn’t work out too well and he starts apologising but she waves dismissively, tells him to use his fingers and screws her eyes shut when her world turns white.

She lets him sleep in her bed because it’s the polite thing to do and it’s probably going to be weird between them tomorrow but that’s okay because Brad isn’t Peter, so she can afford losing him. He has his arm around her waist and snores into the crook of her neck and she lies awake, wondering if her pragmatic streak makes her a cold person.

.

.

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**miles:** so how was he

 **me:** not your business.

 **miles:** but you told gwen???

 **me:** nice try.

 **me:** you know i haven’t told her anything.

 **miles:** dammit

.

.

.

Her boss praises her on her newest article. It was a story about some famous person. Probably an actress or some sort of influencer. She can’t remember because she rarely remembers the people she writes about for money. It’s different with her blog. She always remembers the people she writes about for her blog.

Last night, she wrote about the journalists that were killed in the _Charlie Hebdo_ shooting. It wasn’t anti-Muslim or anti-satire. It wasn’t even a real article. It was an obituary because 12 people are dead now. As expected, though, the comment section became a collecting tank for grief, condolence, conspiracy theories, victim blaming, Islamophobic bullshit and grammatically incorrect messages saying, ‘Clik this linck if you wantt to make 500$ real faaaaassst’.

She scowls at the screen of her phone and takes a mouthful of eucalyptus tea. She usually prefers rosehip but she woke up with a headache and a blocked nose today, so she might as well take prophylactic measures.

“What are you doing?”

Liz looks very professional when she enters the breakroom in black suit pants and a cream-coloured blouse. She’s a Northwestern alumni and also writes about famous people, the only difference being that she interviews them. Her cat, Linus, has an Instagram account and her fiancé is a sous chef at The Odeon. She’s beautiful, friendly and extremely intelligent. During her early days at the _Bugle_ , MJ may have had the tiniest crush on her.

“Um – I’m reading a blog.”

She puts her phone into her back pocket and cringes because she sounds like someone who lives on nothing but cigarettes and whiskey.

“Are you sick?” Liz asks.

“No?”

“I’m just asking because – yeah, well. No offence but you look like shit.”

Her plans to grit out a sarcastic ‘Thank you’ are thwarted by a violent sneeze. For a second she fears that her brain might explode but then it’s over and she shudders and slaps on a smile that is meant to be reassuring. (It probably comes off as agonised.)

“Which blog?”

“Huh?”

“Which blog are you reading?”

She blinks, confused and a tad disappointed. She kinda thought Liz was going to tell her to go home and rest. But this is the _Bugle_. The only valid excuse for not being able to do your job is that you’re on your deathbed and even then Jameson definitively wouldn’t shy away from barging into the ICU and commanding you to stop malingering.

“Michelle?”

“Yes?”

“The blog.”

“Right,” she sniffles and ends up coughing as well because her life is a joke, “The author goes by Mary Jane Watson but it’s probably a pseudonym. I can send you a link.”

There must be a fine line between over and underselling your secret online identity. She’s not sure if she just crossed that line or if she’s still miles away from touching it. Liz doesn’t seem to mind. She smiles and nods and puts a hand on her hip, which makes her look even more professional.

“That would be great,” she says before patting her upper arm, “Now go home and don’t come back until you feel better. I’ll ask Flash to step in for you. You haven’t heard this from me but he’s been dying to write something about the Kardashians.”

.

.

.

She deals with her cold like she’s dealt with every other minor illness that came before. She buys a shit ton of tea, holes up in her apartment and lies to pretty much everyone she knows. She ignores Brad, tells Gwen that something came up at work and her parents that she’s fine, and she drags herself to Bruce’s office so they can talk about Peter because that’s what they’ve been doing for a while now. The next day, she reads _An Artist in the Floating World_ in the span of three hours and writes an article about the Hypercacher hostile crisis. Then she cleans her entire apartment, forgets to have dinner and passes out during the first ten minutes of _Clueless_.

(She wakes with a sore throat and her bones aching, so for the next couple of days, she only leaves her bed to eat, pee, shower or to take a walk with Pumpkin.)

.

.

.

The first person she had sex with was Harry. He was handsome, popular and full of himself. They didn’t have much in common except that they went to the same school but they started dating in junior year anyway and broke it off right before they went to college. During her first year at Princeton, she slept with a couple of guys until she fell in love with Felicia over steaming cups of green tea, weekly study dates at the library and their mutual disdain for Greek life.

Felicia was in her narratology class and a part-time spoken word poet. She used to perform at Café Vivian on the weekends and mostly wrote about love and pain and how neither could exist without the other. She was blunt, liked to wear cherry red lipstick and she had the most beautiful voice. When they kissed for the first time in the backyard of a bar, MJ felt a flutter in her chest and nearly stumbled backwards into a trashcan, causing Felicia to throw her head back and crack up hard before she grabbed her by the collar of her jacket and pulled her in for another kiss.

They were together for a year and a half but then Felicia got the offer to complete her Bachelor’s degree at Sorbonne and MJ didn’t have it in her to ask her to stay, so Felicia went to Europe and she never came back. She lives in Amsterdam now and her current girlfriend is the daughter of a Serbian diplomat. Chances are it’s not normal that they’re still texting but it’s not like MJ is going to complain about it. Felicia was her first love, so it’s nice that they became friends after the break-up. It’s also nice that Felicia made it to the funeral last year.

.

.

.

**liz:** how are you?

 **me:** better. tell jameson i’ll be back on monday.

 **liz:** ok.

 **liz:** do you know if mary jane does interviews?

 **me:** why?

 **liz:** because she’s amazing and i think more people should read her blog.

.

.

.

There’s still a faint taste of cough syrup in her mouth when she meets Peter at the Unisphere at the end of the week. She brought an extra bag of bread for him so that they can feed the ducks together. Pumpkin is beside himself with joy when he finds his (second) favourite human being near the fountain: he whines and yaps and pulls at the leash like he wants to get away from her, and she tries her best not to feel like a third wheel when Peter squats down in front of her, cooing and babbling at her dog and feeding him some bone-shaped treats.

He’s wearing a lined denim jacket and the red-and-blue scarf. His hair is a mess and her fingertips tingle with the urge to smooth back the curls that have fallen into his face. (He needs a haircut or some of those cheesy bow tie clips you can get at Claire’s.) As soon as he’s back on his feet, his smile morphs into an accusing frown.

“You’re sick,” he says.

“I _was_ sick. I took care of it.”

“Em.”

“I’m better now.”

He sighs.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you would’ve gone full nurse on me.”

He drops his gaze and she looks at the fountain. Flushing Meadows is different from Astoria Park. It’s more spacious and more crowded at the same time. She always feels a bit naked here.

“I _am_ a nurse,” Peter says, “It’s my job.”

“I know but _I’m_ not your job.”

He huffs like he wants to laugh but can’t because he’s too agitated. She doesn’t like this. There’s something off about them today and it can’t be because she didn’t tell him about her cold or because she chose to tell him why she didn’t tell him just a few moments ago. It must be something else, so she tries to channel Bruce but it’s a fruitless attempt because she’s not a friendly manipulative shithead.

She hands him the leash and they start walking. Once they make it to the pond, Pumpkin takes the opportunity to bark at the ducks. They manage to lure them back to the bank with a handful of breadcrumbs and the silence isn’t companionable this time.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she says eventually, throwing more crumbs at the ducks and watching them fight over breakfast.

“You don’t have to apologise.”

“Um, yes I do.”

“No,” he shakes his head, “I mean, I’m not happy that you didn’t tell me but I get it.”

She quirks a brow.

“You do?”

“Yeah. I know you don’t like it when people worry about you, and I get it because I don’t like it when people worry about me either but – but it’s _you_ , Em,” he looks a bit helpless when he shrugs, “It’s not like I can just turn it off, you know.”

She doesn’t ask him to elaborate. She wants to but she talked to Bruce about this and they both came to the conclusion that she needs more time.

.

.

.

She does the interview with Liz and it’s the weirdest thing ever because Liz keeps smiling into the camera and she’s using her ‘interviewer voice’ whereas MJ has a piece of paper taped over her webcam and only replies in the chat. (She even logged into Skype as a guest with an e-mail account she created exclusively for this occasion because she is ‘that’ paranoid about being found out.)

Apart from that, doing the interview with Liz is the coolest thing ever. They agree on literally everything they talk about, be it the fact that police brutality against black people has always been a problem, that capitalism sucks, that Madeline Anderson is criminally underrated and that their interview will never be published. At least not in the _Bugle_.

“I’m still glad we’re doing this, though,” Liz tells her, for once not looking like her professional self since she’s wearing no make-up and a head wrap and a blue t-shirt with a comic seal and a speech bubble on it saying, ‘I approve’, “It’s nice to talk to someone who cares, you know? I really need to thank Michelle for recommending you.”

It seems that her fingers are on autopilot when she writes: _She a friend of yours?_

Liz shrugs.

“It’s hard to tell sometimes. She’s a very private person but I like her a lot. She’s, like, the only sane person at the office. I mean, Flash is sane, too, but he acts like a frat boy because he wants to fit in,” Liz sighs and takes a sip of coffee. The print on her mug says, ‘Don’t mix metaphors, writing isn’t rocket surgery’. MJ can’t help but snort, “Anyways, I think you and Michelle would get along great. She’s _so_ smart. I hate that Jameson only lets her write about fashion fiascos and reality stars,” she sighs again, “He doesn’t deserve her.”

She drops her hands into her lap and she realises that this was a bad idea because Liz thinks she’s talking to a stranger, which is fucked-up because they’re colleagues and MJ doesn’t want to go to work tomorrow and pretend that she has no idea that Liz is actually into politics and crazy about bad puns. She stares at the piece of paper and for a second she fantasises about ripping it off and revealing herself. The sheer prospect makes her light-headed. Biting the inside of her cheek, she types out a response.

_We don’t know each other very well but I’m sure he doesn’t deserve you either._

.

.

.

**brad:** hey you ;)

 **brad:** wanna watch pierrot le fou with me this saturday?

 **me:** i have a family thing.

 **brad:** ok :(

.

.

.

Her brother is everywhere.

He’s watching 90s teen comedies with her when she’s 13 and sick with the flu. He’s unusually quiet when they’re having dinner with her parents on her 16th birthday before he goes into a full rant about a girl he met in his anatomy class. He’s grinning with pride and holding hands with his girlfriend during his graduation ceremony.

He’s bawling like a baby when he learns that he’s the first person she came out to. He’s telling her about this new guy at the hospital who passed his NCLEX with flying colours and is a _Star Wars_ super fan. He’s helping her move into her apartment, putting plates into the wrong cup boards and eventually jumping around to ‘Two Steps, Twice’ in the kitchen.

He’s calling her via FaceTime from his hotel room in Ithaca three days before the accident and he’s showing her the ring he bought for Priyanka because _she’s the one, Chelle, I knew it the moment I sat down next to her all those years ago_.

He’s everywhere and nowhere and he never really leaves and it’s making her sick.

.

.

.

**gwen:** brad was super depressed during band practice today.

 **gwen:** did you two have a fight?

 **me:** we’re not together.

 **gwen:** oh.

 **gwen:** ok.

 **gwen:** i have a feeling he doesn’t know that.

.

.

.

On the 31st of January, Peter picks her up at her place around 2 and they don’t talk during the train ride. They sit together and she has her arm looped around his and she’s listening to ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ on her headphones while he stares out of the window. Just like her, he’s dressed in black and she doesn’t like the colour on him because it makes him look pale and sad and everything he shouldn’t be.

She has to let go of him when they arrive at the grave. She doesn’t want to but her mom is all fragile and teared-up and there are so many other people here and she needs to thank them all for coming.

Her dad gives a speech. He’s holding himself like the next breeze will knock him over, so she can’t look at him, and she can’t look at Peter either because if she did, she would probably find him looking right back at her, trapped in his own personal painful memories of her brother and she fucking hates that he’s gone.

.

.

.

She doesn’t cry until they’re back at her apartment. It’s dark outside and they’re sitting on her couch and they’re still in their coats and he’s holding her with his chin resting on top of her head, murmuring so many ‘I’ve got you’s and ‘It’s okay, Em’s into her hair that the words blend together at some point.

“Sorry,” she says, shuffling away from him when she’s done sobbing into his chest. As if on cue, Pumpkin jumps right into her lap and nudges her with his snout until she gives in to a wet laugh and kisses his head, “I’m really tired of dragging you down.”

“ _Em_ ,” he says, and her name in his mouth is pure heartbreak. A moment ago, his hand was nestled in the back of her neck and now it’s resting in the space between them. It’s not right. She wants to reach out for him but he’s already there, making it so that they’re fingers are entwined, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Her head snaps up and it’s like she’s seeing him for the first time, which doesn’t make any sense because she’s seen him more than a thousand times by now. She knows what he looks like when he’s happy or embarrassed or when he’s trying to hold back a laugh. She knows what he looks like when he had to watch a mother say goodbye to her dying son or daughter during a shift. She knows what he looks like when he’s thinking about May or Ned, and she knows what he looks like when he’s thinking about Ben and his parents. She also knows what he looks like when he’s looking at her. Nine times out of ten it makes her heart beat so fast that she thinks she’s going to faint.

She’s not sure if other people feel the same way about him. She wouldn’t be surprised if they thought he’s sex on a stick because he’s ripped. What they probably don’t understand, though, is that he’s beautiful. What they probably don’t understand is that he’s really fucking beautiful with his floofy hair, too big ears and wacky brows. And it’s not just that. He’s a beautiful person. He’s a huge dork and so kind that it’s almost infuriating and he wants to help everyone all the time.

“Can you stay?”

Her throat clicks and she feels stupid because on a normal day, she would never ask him something like that. On a normal day, she would never let him hold her hand or allow herself to hold his because on a normal day, he wouldn’t even be here. On a normal day, he would be at the hospital or out with his co-workers and she would be perfectly fine with being alone.

“Em,” he says again, and she tightens her grip on him because today wasn’t a normal day. It wasn’t even a normal month, “Of course I can stay. I – I _want_ to stay, actually.”

She frowns.

“Because you’re worried about me?”

“Honestly? Yeah.”

His smile is sheepish, like he knows she doesn’t want to hear this but like he can’t bring himself to lie to her either. With her heart in her throat and her defiance in shambles, she pushes Pumpkin into his lap and gets up from the couch.

“I’ll allow it,” she says whilst pulling her phone out of her coat pocket, “I’ll also allow you not to get your panties in a twist.”

“Why would I get my –”

“Because it’s late and I’m starving and you’re _always_ hungry.”

He tilts his head to the side like a confused puppy while the real dog in the room makes a funny sneezing sound.

“So?”

“So dinner’s on me and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Oh my God.”

His shoulders slump and he slants his head with a giggle. His tendency to whine about how he doesn’t want her to waste her money on him whenever she offers to buy him take-out or a drink is as adorable as it is annoying. It’s been kind of an inside joke between them for years.

“Joe’s or Spice Symphony?”

“Y-You don’t have to –”

“ _Joe’s or Spice Symphony, loser?_ ”

He groans.

“Joe’s, please.”

“See? That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

She doesn’t miss the half-hearted roll of his eyes, and it’s not like she suddenly forgets about her brother or like she’s not exhausted from ‘celebrating’ his first death anniversary. It’s just that she wasn’t exaggerating when she told him that she was starving. Besides that, she needs a break. Even if it’s just for an hour.

She watches him stand up (much to Pumpkin’s chagrin) and shrug off his jacket. She’s already on the phone with their go-to pizza place when he touches her lower back and brings his lips up to her temple. It’s a quick peck. It’s nothing to be nervous or excited about but she still ends up stuttering and almost forgets to tell Mr Aziz her address.


	6. Chapter 6

**Winter 2015**

Turns out ‘complicated’ means a lot of things.

Turns out it means wanting to give her a real kiss when she’s placing their pizza order but going for her temple instead because his nerves get the best of him. Turns out it means they end up watching _Jennifer’s Body_ together, which in her opinion is actually a feminist masterpiece (fuck the critics). Turns out it means joining her for a quick midnight walk with Pumpkin. Turns out it means catching tears with his thumb when they’re lying in her bed and she’s telling him that she and Marvin used to build blanket forts and eat ice cream in the living room every Saturday when they were kids.

Turns out it means waking up next to her and freaking out a bit because watching her in the early morning sunlight while she’s still fast asleep riles up his heart rate until it’s clearly above the norm. Turns out it means pretending that he doesn’t want to tell her everything (the stuff she already knows and the stuff he’s been keeping from her) when they’re having toast for breakfast. Turns out it means replaying and dissecting every conversation they ever had while he’s on his way home.

Turns out it means spending the rest of the day in a daze. Turns out it means feeling sorry for himself and jerking off under the shower. Turns out it means gritting his teeth through his climax while her name stings his throat like a fresh cigarette burn.

.

.

.

“What’s that?”

Lifting his head from the pillow, he finds his latest hook-up plucking the necklace from his nightstand and examining it with a curious gaze. His first impulse is to snatch it out of her hand and tell her to leave but that wouldn’t be fair to Carlie because Carlie seems nice and the spider tattoo on her left hip is kinda sexy and she doesn’t know about MJ or how out of his depth Peter’s been lately.

“It’s for a friend,” he says.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It is.”

She hums and places the necklace back on the nightstand. He bought it back in November as a Christmas gift. He can’t even remember how he came up with the idea because MJ is pretty ‘meh’ about jewellery. He figures he must have been going through the endless list of things she likes. The books and the paintings and the music albums and the murder mysteries. He must have stumbled upon it on the internet by accident or blind intuition and he must have thought, ‘This is something I want her to have’.

It was expensive and it took weeks for the packet to arrive at his doorstep and despite all that, he hasn’t given it to her yet because he’s really good at making excuses. Like, he couldn’t give it to her on the holidays because they didn’t see each other on the holidays and he couldn’t give it to her on New Year’s Eve because even though they saw each other on New Year’s Eve, it was Marvin’s birthday and Marvin is dead and overwhelming MJ with a grand gesture he wouldn’t have known how to explain or justify would have been the wrong thing to do.

So he’s been keeping the necklace on the nightstand because he thought that being forced to look at it every day would help him muster up the courage to give it to MJ the next time take they’d take a walk together. However, the problem is that he hasn’t seen or heard from her since the morning after Marvin’s death anniversary and that was a week ago, so maybe something happened. Maybe she realised that sharing a bed with him is something their relationship isn’t built for, which would suck because he liked sharing a bed with her.

He takes a breath and looks at Carlie. He likes sharing a bed with her, too. Just not in a ‘this is something I want to do every day because I think I finally figured out how I really feel about you’ kind of way. He likes sharing a bed with Carlie because it’s a one-time thing and they’re both okay with that.

“I had a friend, too,” she says, fixing his ceiling fan with a wry smile, “His name was Dylan. We were partners before he transferred to the major case squad. I don’t think he was into jewellery but if things had been different I would’ve – he was – he was great,” she laughs a small, pitiful laugh, “He was really great.”

He met Carlie four hours ago when he was having drinks with his friends from work. It was a rather chaotic gathering: Dr Wilson told him to call him ‘Sam’ because _stop being so compulsively polite, man, we’ve been working together for three months now_ before he left to pick up an old Army friend from the airport while Claire and her boyfriend, Matt, were busy doing thing that couples do when they use banter as a form of foreplay. Johnny couldn’t even make it in the first place because he had a date. Needless to say Peter was bored and alone with his thoughts and since all of his thoughts were connected to MJ, he was desperate for a distraction.

The distraction came with Carlie who was leaning against the bar counter, nursing a beer and looking as lonely as he felt, and now they’re at his place and he doesn’t think it’s weird that she’s telling him this deeply personal stuff. He thinks it’s okay because they fucked (first on his couch and then here in his bed) so it’s not like they’re complete strangers anymore.

“Did he die?” he asks, cringing at his tactlessness but instead of bursting into tears or telling him to mind his own fucking business, Carlie sighs, arches her back and stretches her arms over her head, causing the plaid wool blanket they’re sharing to slide down her breasts.

“He got married.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

There’s an odd sense of humour in her tone that doesn’t match the sadness in her eyes. He crosses his arms over his chest.

“Did you want to –”

“Oh God, no,” another laugh escapes her and it sounds so terribly wrong, “I mean, we never went there. We never even kissed. I guess I wanted to but it was obvious he didn’t like me that way. Makes me sound like a schoolgirl, right?” she shakes her head (probably at herself) and doesn’t wait for him to reply, “Anyways, he transferred shortly after the wedding and we kinda stopped being friends. I’m happy that he’s happy, though. I wish him the best.”

He scrubs a hand over his face before he looks at her again. He’s intrigued now even though he doesn’t want to be.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why was it obvious he didn’t like you that way?”

Prodding people until they tell him about their secrets isn’t his style but for some reason he can’t stop himself from asking. It’s like suddenly there’s all this nervous, anxious energy inside of him, bubbling in his veins and foaming over. It’s like Carlie’s tale of how she lost Dylan because she was convinced she didn’t have a chance with him flipped a switch in his head and now all he can do is spin his own tale of how he lost MJ because he took too long to get his shit together.

“I don’t know.”

He feels horrible when he sees that Carlie’s chin is trembling. He feels horrible and he wishes he could take the question back but he can’t. He feels horrible because it looks like Dylan was Carlie’s MJ and Peter didn’t want to hurt her, he didn’t want to reopen old sores. He averts his gaze when she readjusts the blanket.

.

.

.

On Valentine’s Day, the hospital lobby is decorated with roses, sparkling garlands and pink paper hearts. Dr Strange convenes a staff meeting in the auditorium and tells everyone to be extra friendly today because today is all about celebrating love and how love is the cure or something like that. (Sidenote: It’s kinda hilarious that he chooses to deliver his speech with his usual blank face and robotic inflection.)

The kids don’t care too much about Valentine’s Day, so Peter’s shift isn’t different from any other shift except that he spots a familiar yellow beanie peeking out from behind one of the huge plants in the waiting area when he’s already on his way to the locker room in the late afternoon.

It’s not a bad sign that Lisa is here. Ever since she was released back in December, she’s been coming to the hospital every other week for her check-ups with Sam. Peter is happy that her cheeks are rounder and that the sick sallowness of her skin his gone. She smiles at him and he figures that he has a few minutes to spare before he has to head home, so he takes the empty seat next to her.

“How are you?”

She shrugs.

“School’s boring but I’m kind of a celebrity now, so that’s cool I guess.”

“A celebrity?”

“I’m the cancer kid.”

He frowns.

“You’re in remission now. These check-ups, they’re just to make sure you –”

“I know but I couldn’t go to school for a while because I was sick. That’s, like, public knowledge,” she says, taking off her beanie and revealing her short dark brown hair, “I’m also still kinda bald.”

He snaps his tongue involuntarily. He doesn’t like hearing her talk like this. He doesn’t like that she’s self-conscious about her looks. He doesn’t like that what happened to her last year will always set her apart from her peers and classmates.

“They’re mean to you?”

“Nah. Leo would kill them if they tried. I’m glad she’s my friend,” he could be imagining stuff but he swears she’s blushing a bit, “We’re having a sleepover tonight. We’re gonna watch _Alien_ because Valentine’s Day is stupid.”

“As far as I know, you’re too young to watch these kinds of movies.”

“As far as _I_ know, you’re lame.”

She smirks and he barks out a laugh. She’s like a kid version of MJ. Smart, sarcastic and so strong. The thought doesn’t leave him until he’s waiting for his train half an hour later, bobbing his head to the Arctic Monkeys song that is playing on his silver second-hand iPhone. It’s the first track of their fifth album and it has this really cool psychedelic R&B vibe to it. It makes him think of MJ, so he makes it her personalised ringtone and waits for it to blow up along with her caller ID for the next seven days.

.

.

.

She doesn’t call him and she doesn’t text him either and he’s too stressed out to call or text her and ask why she won’t call or text him. As a consequence he starts moping around like he’s never moped around before. He’s having one caffeinated existential crisis after the other, agonising over when he’s going to see her again and what he should or should not say to her. He’s glaring at the necklace like he’s deeply offended by it, rolling the chain between his fingers before he goes to bed and watching it shimmer against her skin in his dreams.

It only fits that he becomes the laughing stock of his friend circle: Sam thinks he’s being an idiot, Claire thinks he’s being a coward, Johnny thinks he’s being ridiculous and Ned thinks he’s being unnecessarily insecure about the whole situation. May thinks he’s being all of the above and she ruffles his hair the next time they’re having dinner.

“She’s the type of person that needs space every now and then. I’m glad you respect that.”

“Of course I respect tha –”

“I’m also glad you’re not sleeping around anymore.”

“ _May_.”

He groans but appreciates the sentiment. As a matter of fact, he appreciates everything about his aunt. Always.

“You can’t treat her like everyone else. If your feelings for her are serious, you need to be serious about her, too,” she twirls a load of linguini around her fork and looks at him over the rims of her glasses, “Your feelings for her _are_ serious, right?”

“Yeah.”

He doesn’t have to think about it, doesn’t even try to deny it. He just says it, just admits to it and now it’s out there and it’s true and the aftermath is not as gruesome as he thought it would be. There’s no panic, no shame, no need to backpedal. There’s just May and him and everything he’s ever felt for MJ, wrapped up and bound together by one simple word.

“I’m in love with her,” he says, “I think it’s always been like that.”

May smiles at him like she already knew this, and doesn’t sound ‘serious’ way better than ‘complicated’? He thinks it does. He thinks ‘serious’ is what they really are.

.

.

.

**me:** mj called

 **ned:** WHEN

 **me:** 5 minutes ago

 **me:** im gonna see her tomorrow

 **ned:** that’s good, right

 **me:** i think so?

 **ned:** i know you’re super nervous but you can do this.

 **ned:** i believe in you!

 **me:** thanks man :’)

.

.

.

Sam and Claire and Johnny and Ned. They were right but they also missed a couple of things. (It’s not their fault, though. They don’t know him like May does.) Anyways. Not only is he an idiot and a coward and ridiculous and unnecessarily insecure about the whole situation. He’s also scared and cruel.

Like, he was scared when he put her on a pedestal right after they met, and he was cruel to them both when he turned her into this mystical, untouchable being and pushed her out of his reach just so that he had a reason to keep his head down and not ask for more when he should have let himself be in love with her from the very start.

.

.

.

They meet at a tiny retro-themed restaurant in Long Island City in the evening. The place is called ‘Pete’s Diner & Grill’ and it’s wedged between a barber shop and a Lebanese grocery store. The waitress, an elderly woman named Martha, is so delighted by them that she walks them to the ‘cosy table’ that’s furthest from the entrance and talks them into ordering milkshakes and a giant plate of fries.

“I wanted to call you but I had to take care of a couple of things first,” MJ says once the drinks and the food (and a bowl of water for Pumpkin) have arrived.

“Are you okay?”

“I had a breakdown.”

His face falls and his heart feels heavy. Christmas and New Year’s Eve and the entirety of January must have been hell for her. He should have known that, he did know that, he was right fucking there. He swallows against the lump in his throat.

“I’m so sorry, Em.”

“Yeah but then I had a break _through_.”

He blinks.

“Oh.”

A slow smile burgeons at the right corner of her mouth and he tucks his hand into his pocket, feeling for the necklace. He’s been excited and panicky about seeing her all day. (It got so bad that the kids started wondering if he was sick, too.)

He can’t believe she’s really here and for some reason sitting with her like this makes him feel like he’s in high school again. It makes him feel like he’s back in the body of this lanky, asthmatic boy who was really into math and video games and never went on a date until mid-senior year when he finally found the guts to ask out Cindy from his Spanish class. She was his first girlfriend and he thinks they were in love for a while and of course he’s been in love with other people since then, too, but MJ is different. Pedestal or not, she’s the most amazing person he’s ever met.

He dips a fry into his milkshake even though his insides are flip-flopping so hard that he doubts he’ll be able to keep anything down. The jukebox starts playing ‘At Last’ of all songs (he catches Martha winking at him from the counter) and the lighting at this place is awfully nice. He wants to scream. The universe is clearly fucking with him.

“Can I tell you about it?” MJ asks then and he needs a second to remember what they were talking about before his lovesick brain went into overdrive.

“Please.”

And so she does.

She tells him about the blog she used to run back in college and the ‘coffee shop incident’ and that she reactivated her blog after the complete and utter disaster that was the grand jury announcement regarding Michael Brown Jr’s killer. She tells him that she’s using a pseudonym because the blog isn’t about her, and then she shows him her blog on her phone and lets him read an article she wrote a few weeks ago. It’s a sledgehammer blow against Roy Moore that explains why his efforts to force county clerks in Alabama to illegally withhold marriage licenses from same-sex couples makes him an even bigger asshole than he already is. She even used graphs and statistics and a timeline to prove her point, and he finds that her attention to detail when it comes to verbally eviscerating far-right demagogues is a huge turn-on.

“So what do you think?” she asks when he’s done reading, and he stutters out something along the lines of ‘I think you’re brilliant and holy fucking shit I didn’t even know about this’ to which she replies with a smile that is more present in her eyes than the rest of her face.

“It’s not like many people know that I’m the one who’s writing all this stuff,” she says, “I’m pretty sure most of my readers think that Mary Jane is collective.”

He gives her her phone back.

“Am I the only one who knows?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow,” he slumps back in his seat, “So that’s why you went AWOL?”

She grins and shakes her head.

“There’s more.”

“Hit me.”

He gives her a challenging look. The sole purpose is to make her laugh and he feels like he just found a solution for world peace when he succeeds.

.

.

.

He forgets about the necklace. He doesn’t cop out, he forgets about it because something happens and it takes up all the space in his head. Not that there was much space left to begin with after she told him about her anonymous interview with Liz (which is awesome), the stuff she’s been working on with Bruce (which only means that she’s braver than he could ever be) and that she’s been visiting Marvin’s grave more frequently these days even though it’s still incredibly hard for her (which makes his chest swell with pride and sympathy).

It sucks that she can’t take the train with him because Pumpkin tends to get anxious on the train at night, and it sucks that he is not allowed to walk her home because she somehow guesses that he has an early shift tomorrow, which earns him a disapproving _Jesus fucking Christ, loser, think about the kids and get some sleep_. It’s still nice that they end up waiting for his train together, though.

They’re pretty much the only ones at the station aside from a few semi-drunk college kids and a bunch of guys in suits who look all the same, but he’s not concerned with any of them. He’s concerned with MJ because it seems that her relatively good mood began to wither gradually after they left the diner and now everything that’s left of it is the shred of a shadow that could also pass as a scowl.

“Hey.”

She’s standing in front of him, staring at her shoes, and her body language is tense: she’s all furrowed brows, clenched teeth and fidgeting hands. He figures that telling him all this stuff was exhausting but he doesn’t want to end tonight on a sombre note, so he feels for the necklace again and trails the flower-shaped pendant with the tip of his index finger. He licks his lips.

“I – uh – there’s something I need to tell yo –”

“You’re the best person I know,” she blurts out, and his mouth snaps shut so fast that it hurts a little, “You’re the best person I know and if I told you _why_ you’re the best person I know, we’d be standing here for decades. We can’t do that, though, because we both have jobs and lives and – and it’s freezing,” she exhales a weak laugh, “It’s just – I always thought we were best friends, you know? But we’re not. Ned is your best friend. And – a-and Marvin,” her face crumbles when she says his name for what could be the first time since the funeral, “M-Marvin was mine.”

Somewhere in the distance a clear, automated voice announces that his train is about to arrive but he couldn’t care less about that. A tear breaks from the corner of her eye and he realises that he’s crying, too. He’s crying and he can’t stand the distance between them.

“What I’m trying to say is that I miss him every day and I will never stop missing him but I also want to get better at missing him and I feel like I’m already better at missing him when _you’re_ around because you’re you and you’re so _good_. And I don’t know if that’s healthy but it is what it is,” he almost can’t hear her over the roar of his pulse and the tell-tale rattle of the train, “You’re so good and I love that about you.”

He takes a step in her direction, heart hammering in his chest. His legs feel like they’re made of lead and he remembers how she blew a cloud of smoke into the night sky at Marvin’s birthday party. He remembers how she laughed when he called her the next day and apologised in case he was coming off as a creepy stalker.

He remembers how nervous he was when he introduced her to May and how his belly fluttered when he took her to the Parker family grave for the first time. He remembers how she squatted down before the tombstone and how his eyes began to sting when she addressed his parents and Ben directly to tell them that she had been looking forward to meeting them.

“I love everything about you,” she places a hand on his chest as more tears come rushing down her cheeks.

He remembers how his heart cracked when he opened the door to his apartment and found her on the other side of the threshold, shaking and rambling about Marvin and a car accident. He remembers that she was wearing rain boots and pyjamas under her coat and that he yanked her inside and held her as she broke down.

He remembers how badly he wanted to hold her hand during the concert, how badly he wanted to drag her into one of the narrower aisles and bury his nose in her hair when they were book-hunting at the ‘Sanctum’. How there was never a moment he wasn’t in love with her, never a moment he didn’t want her, never a moment he wouldn’t have moved mountains, slayed dragons or cut himself up and into pieces if she had asked him to.

“Em, I –”

“You’re gonna miss your train.”

“I don’t care.”

She huffs.

“You’re an idiot.”

“I know.”

The wind picks up and slaps the back of his neck. His voice is shaky and he dares to smile at her while Pumpkin starts pawing at his legs because he’s probably sick of not being the centre of attention. Normally, he would tend to the dog immediately but he can’t take his eyes off MJ. He loves her beyond reason and, as clichéd as it sounds, he doesn’t think he’s ever going to stop.

The front lights of the train bounce off her face the very second he leans in to kiss her and the rattle dies down when she meets him halfway.


	7. Chapter 7

**Spring 2015**

It’s not like they’re different people all of a sudden. They still go to the park together (except that now there’s occasional hand-holding involved) and they still have hours-long conversations about books, movies, music, their jobs, their friends, their families, the people they lost and the overall fucked-up state of the world (except that these days their conversations tend to travel from the couch to the bedroom where they conk out on each other eventually).

She lets him proofread her blog articles sometimes and stocks up her pantry with gummy bears and Flaming Hot Cheetos. Likewise, he makes room for her favourite teas in his tiny kitchen cabinet and doesn’t get in her way when she spends an entire evening reorganising his bookshelf. He also sets up a bed for Pumpkin near the thermostat in his living room and she likes being with him like this. She likes the domesticity of it.

.

.

.

She also likes kissing him and they’re either equally brilliant at it or ‘made for each other’. Given that he’s an enormous sap, Peter obviously prefers the latter explanation while MJ is more inclined to believe that the two of them just happen to be really good at what they’re doing based on chemistry and the simple fact that they’re adults and thus had years to hone their kissing skills.

“That’s one of the least romantic things I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” he mumbles into her neck as his thumb slips under the hem of her sweater and slides up the slope of her left hip bone.

They’re on his couch and there’s some documentary playing in the background. She has no idea what it’s about. It could be about ancient Rome or an unsolved murder that took place in the 1930s. The only two things she can concentrate on right now are the weight and the warmth of his body. She also kinda doesn’t want him to move ever again.

“You mean I’m killing the mood?”

“Yes.”

With that, he presses a kiss to the underside of her jaw, completely undermining what he just said, and then he moves up to her mouth, humming when she curls her arms around his neck and legs around his waist.

.

.

.

His apartment is very ‘him’. It’s charming and disorganised and unapologetically nerdy. There are _Star Wars_ , _Bioshock_ and _Firefly_ posters. There are action figures, Funko Pop dolls, graphic novels and books about physics and chemistry. His hallway is cluttered with retro-tech and piles of worn science joke t-shirts and his doormat has the periodic table printed on it.

It was his love for science and science fiction that helped him bond with Marvin in the early days. They were both into space operas and obsessed with Douglas Adams and they became delusional with joy when _Pacific Rim_ was released in cinemas. They wouldn’t stop talking about it for weeks and every time Ned was in town, things got exponentially worse.

She’s grateful that her brother had a friend like Peter. Someone he could rely on at work and who didn’t ridicule him for liking ‘white people stuff’ like some of his other friends did. She’s also grateful that Peter had a friend like Marvin who complimented his ‘clumsy goofball’ vibes with calm confidence and a less chaotic approach to life.

She loves him but she hasn’t told him yet.

Chances are he already knows.

“What?”

She realises he just caught her staring but there’s no need for her to feel exposed because he’s beaming at her. She’s leaning against his kitchen counter while he’s busy making coffee. He told her he woke up with a Patrick Wolf song in his head today (“You know, the one that goes _youuuuuuuuuuuuuu put me in the magic position_.” – “Yeah, loser. It’s called ‘The Magic Position’.” – “Right.”) and he’s been mumble-singing the chorus all morning, bobbing his head to a tune only he can hear.

His curls are all screwed up, his eyes are a little bleary and he’s still in his sleeping clothes. Also: the left side of his neck is covered in hickeys and she feels giddy at the sight of them. She dips her chin, blinks at the floor and smiles.

“Nothing.”

.

.

.

Her breakthrough isn’t really a breakthrough. It’s more of a subconscious wake-up call that grows louder with each day that follows the death anniversary. She doesn’t know ‘what’ it is but it’s there, swimming in her veins, and she can’t ignore it.

“It’s okay to feel like this,” Bruce tells her in early February, “It’s okay to want to get better even if you think you’re not allowed to.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that. She’s in the orange armchair, playing with a paper tissue and thinking about how much of a wreck she was when she first came here last spring.

“I don’t want to have these thoughts at all,” she says, “I don’t want to think that Mar – that my brother wouldn’t want me to be happy now because he’s not here to see it anymore. He wasn’t selfish or possessive like that.”

Bruce nods like he knows what she’s talking about even though he can’t possibly know what she’s talking about. He’s never met her brother in person. He only knows him from her stories and yet – 

“Who says he can’t see you now?”

“ _Please_.”

She scoffs but her heart’s not in it. Truth is there are nights when she spends hours bringing her brother back to life, and in her mind, he is always smiling at her, always looking a bit wistful while doing it.

“Michelle.”

She can’t look at Bruce. If she did, she would feel like she’s doing this therapy thing all wrong because she hasn’t made any progress and then she would start crying again and she’s can’t have that because her eyes hurt and she’s so fucking tired.

“I think you’re ready to talk to him.”

She knows he’s right and she kinda hates that. (She kinda hates everything right now.) She sighs and rakes a hand through her hair.

“Took me long enough, huh?”

.

.

.

Her brother didn’t die because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time or because he was shot by the police. He died because he lost control over his car but he didn’t lose control over his car on purpose. He wasn’t drunk or high or sleepy or suicidal. He wasn’t on the phone or checking his mails.

It was dark and there was ice on the road. That’s why he died and she can’t put the blame on anyone. She can’t make sense of it because it was an accident and most accidents don’t make sense when you really think about it.

They happen out of the blue, they happen when you don’t expect them to happen. They happen when you’re 12 hours away from proposing to your girlfriend because you love her and you want to start a family with her. They happen when you’re about to finish your residency. They happen when the friendship between your genius little sister and your dorky friend from the ward is so adorable that thinking about these two makes you smile all the time.

They happen when you’re listening to ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ while you’re on your way to work and you’re in a good mood because the sky is cloudless and full of stars and it’s been a while since you were able to see your future so clearly.

.

.

.

She meets Brad at a crowded Starbucks near the Met two days before Valentine’s Day. He’s dressed impeccably while she probably looks like she just rolled out of bed, which isn’t too far from the truth. She’s been having a hard time taking care of herself since New Year’s Eve. Or even before that.

He greets her with a smile she doesn’t reciprocate and they don’t talk much while they’re standing in line. She almost snaps at him when he tries to pay for her coffee. Apparently, he’s able to sense her irritation and backs down quickly, eyes downcast and lips twisted into a pout.

They find a table next to the condiment bar and to say that she’s surprised when he tells her that he’s been reading too much into their one-night stand would be a lie. Given how many times he’s tried to ask her out via text in the past few weeks alone she expected him to be angered by her silence but instead he’s totally cool about the whole thing and doesn’t accuse her of stringing him along or wasting his time. He even laughs when she wants to know if he’s messing with her.

“I guess it was all in my head,” he says with a touch of guilt in his voice, “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

Stunned, she adds more sugar to her drink. She won’t tell him about Peter or that she only slept with him because he was there since none of that is his business but she’s been kind of a jerk to him, so she feels like needs to say ‘something’.

“You didn’t,” she mumbles eventually, “I just don’t think we’re compatible and – I’m kind of a mess, you know?”

He smirks.

“Yeah, I can see that.”

She flips him off with a snort, which makes him laugh again, and somehow it’s like they both know that this could be the last time they’ll see each other. She’s still not sure if he’s really okay with how things went down between them but she appreciates the lack of drama (mostly because maybe this means that Gwen will finally stop acting like her not being madly in love with Brad is some kind of betrayal to their friendship).

Taking a sip from her coffee, she leans back in her seat and asks him how his training is coming along. If his audible exhale is anything to go by, he seems grateful for the change of subject and starts complaining about his mentor who is known for his obsession with ‘basic white dudes’ like Brahms and Mozart. It’s small talk and she suffers through it, smiling and nodding when she deems it appropriate.

Once she’s back in her apartment, she finds Pumpkin with his leash between his teeth (God knows how he managed to yank it off the hook next to the door), so she takes him for a walk along Shore Boulevard and tries not to think too much about how she’s been a shitty friend to Peter lately and how she doesn’t even want to be his friend at all.

.

.

.

**ned:** you should call him

 **ned:** hes miserable

 **me:** i need more time.

 **me:** also, why do *i* have to call him?

 **ned:** because between the two of u youre the smarter idiot

.

.

.

She decides there’s something wrong with her when she ends up beating him around the head with her feelings. She doesn’t mean to say these things all at once but it’s too late now and apparently, her fear of losing him was unsubstantiated because he doesn’t look like he’s going to leave her any time soon. If anything, he looks the exact opposite.

For some reason she has nothing better to do than to remind him that he has a train to catch and to call him an idiot and then he’s kissing her and he doesn’t taste like sunshine or salvation or all that other absurd stuff you can read about in romance novels. He tastes like the milkshakes they had and a pinch of salt. It’s weird mix of flavours but she finds that she doesn’t care too much because her heart is bouncing around in her chest like it’s trying to get out of there and she’s pretty sure she’s going to die.

“Um,” she says, struggling to catch her breath, “So you –”

“Yeah.”

The word rushes out of him like it’s been sitting in the back of his throat for quite some time. His train leaves without him.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay?”

She looks around, looks anywhere but at him. Pretending to be his best friend was pretty easy. This feels more complicated but at the same time it feels more important and more natural. She takes a deep breath and meets his gaze.

“Okay.”

He cups the side of her face and kisses her again, and he sighs in a way that makes her want to snuggle up behind his ribs and stay there forever. The image is super gross, so she won’t tell him about it.

Or maybe she will tell him because there’s a chance it’ll make him laugh.

.

.

.

**ned:** hiiiiii!!!

 **ned:** so you and peter

 **me:** no.

 **ned:** RUDE

 **ned:** you dont even know what i was going to say

 **me:** were you going to congratulate me?

 **ned:** maybe?

 **me:** i can’t stand you sometimes.

 **ned:** oh mj

 **ned:** thats a lie and we both know it <3

.

.

.

“We should have dinner,” he tells her in mid-March when they’re in her bed and she’s already half-sleep and therefore a bit foggy-brained.

“Sure,” she sighs, right into his chest because that’s where she chose to rest her head when they got settled. His vintage _Back to the Future_ shirt smells like pomegranate laundry detergent and she’s feeling pretty great even though it’s insane that he’s still hungry after he wolfed down a box of orange chicken and an entire bag of M&Ms two hours ago. His metabolism is kinda freaky, though, so she’s not too surprised, “Gimme five minutes and I’ll dial up that Indian place.”

He stirs underneath her and she starts wondering if he’d rather have Thai or Peruvian when his belly jumps with a giggle.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“’kay.”

“I meant dinner,” he says, “Like, _dinner_ dinner.”

There are moments when she’s convinced he’s talking nonsense just to grab her attention. It was his ‘thing’ when they started hanging out without her brother. (She introduced him to the ‘Sanctum’ back then while he gently bullied her into going to an arcade with him, which was actually fun but he doesn’t need to know that.) This must be one of those moments, so she props herself up on her elbows and meets his grin with a squint.

“Hi.”

“Why are you like this.”

He has the audacity to laugh at her but she figures it’s okay because every time he laughs, the corners of his eyes crinkle in this particular way she likes so much. It’s no coincidence that her annoyance with him drains away within seconds and gets replaced with an almost radical sense of affection.

“Em.”

“Yeah?”

“I meant like a date.”

“Oh.”

He’s still grinning at her but his eyes are softer now. They have a hopeful spark in them when he speaks.

“Will you go on a date with me?”

“Yes.”

“ _Really?_ ”

She hates him.

“Yes.”

He has the dumbest, gooiest, most transparent look on his face and his shoulders relax with what she assumes is relief. He’s ridiculous but she meant what she said at the train station. She meant every single word and she wants to kiss him silly.

(She flicks his forehead instead and tells him to go to sleep.)

.

.

.

She thinks it’s good that they’re taking it slow and sure, she’s attracted to him. Sure, she lets him flash up before eyes sometimes when she can’t sleep and touches herself as a last resort. That doesn’t mean she wants to climb him like a tree at the first given opportunity, though.

Their relationship isn’t about sex. It wasn’t about sex when it was simple (which it probably never was) and there’s no doubt that sex will play a bigger role in their relationship one day but it doesn’t have to play a bigger role in their relationship right now, so she’s content with making out with him like they’re teenagers.

.

.

.

Visiting Marvin’s grave has become an integral part of her Sunday routine and Peter joins her whenever his shift schedule allows it. (She makes sure to say hello to his parents and Ben when he can’t be there with her, telling them that he’s doing well and taking care of the kids at the ward.)

She doesn’t always bring flowers but she always tells Marvin about her week. She tells him about Jameson’s latest outburst and that she’s spending her lunch break with Liz and Flash on a regular basis now. She tells him that Liz likes vegan food and extra sweet lemonade and that Flash has a habit of slurping up the remains of his ‘Razzle Dazzle Keto Smoothie’ in an obnoxiously loud manner.

She tells him that their dad will attend a two-week symposium at HU Berlin around in September and that their mom has joined a pottery class, and she shoves her hands into her pockets when she sees an elderly man place a bouquet of yellow tulips on a grave two rows in front of her. He has a cane and he’s wearing a grey flat cap. He starts talking quietly but she can’t make out anything except for a soft _Good morning, my love_.

Steering her focus back to the tombstone at her feet, she tells Marvin about Peter and thinks that talking to a slab of stone is better than not talking at all.

.

.

.

**loser:** how do u feel about Italian

 **loser:** for the date

 **loser:** bc you have a date tmrw

 **loser:** with me!!!

 **loser:** (just in case u forgot)

 **loser:** :)

 **me:** yeah.

 **me:** i’m starting to regret that now.

 **loser:** youre mean but im too excited to care rn

 **me:** don’t be late.

 **loser:** wouldnt dream of it

.

.

.

He’s five minutes late and takes her to a place in Forest Hills. The vegetable lasagna is delicious. Basically vibrating in his chair, he insists on sharing a bottle of wine with her even though they both know he doesn’t ‘get’ wine because it’s just _fancy grape juice, Em, why the hell is everyone making such a fuss about it?_

They talk about the usual stuff but the setting is different and she’s wearing a dress. He nearly knocks over his glass and pats the table surface multiple times before he covers her hand with his. It’s only a little awkward but still awkward enough to make her feel dizzy every time their gazes lock.

Once the bill is covered (he’s about to make a scene when she suggests they split it) and they’re outside the building, he starts rambling about Christmas and plans and missed opportunities. She has no idea where he’s headed with his speech until he seems to get a hang of himself and pulls a black dahlia necklace out of his pocket.

.

.

.

She doesn’t regret a damn thing.


	8. Chapter 8

**Spring 2015**

He gives her the necklace and before he knows it they’re in a side alley and she’s pushing him against the wall, kissing him with a force that renders him immobile for a second. Not that he’s having a bad time, though. He’s all in for her taking charge and moving her mouth against his until he’s light-headed and unable to tell up from down.

“I told you about the murder two years ago,” she gasps, and her breath is hot against his skin. He finally regains some sense of physical consciousness and puts his hands on her hips, “How the fuck did you remember that?”

He pulls her a little closer. It’s sad that she thinks he’s capable of forgetting anything that comes out of her mouth.

“I have a list.”

“Huh?”

“I – uh – I have a list? It’s like every time you tell me about some new thing you like or read about I kinda file it away in my head? Just – just in case you want to talk about it again or you’re sad and you need a distraction or something to make you feel better,” he gulps because it’s hard to keep talking when she looks at him like he’s the only thing she can see (which can’t be the case because technically there’s still a wall of bricks behind him but that’s probably not the point right now), “Or when I want to get you something nice because – b-because I – well, I –”

He’s cut off by her lips and tongue and he can feel her thumb graze his earlobe. The sensation sends a happy shiver down his spine, makes him melt into her and smile into the kiss. It stirs something inside of him, too. Something warm and pervasive that pools in his groin. He spins them around and brings their foreheads together.

“I really like you.”

“I know,” she says, “It’s kinda obvious.”

“ _Em_.”

He wants her to say it back but ends up diving in for another kiss instead. It’s almost chaste compared to the kisses they’ve shared a few seconds ago until she lets her hands wander and buries them in his hair, twirling and twisting it lightly between her fingers. His whine is pathetic and unstoppable. She jerks away immediately.

“You okay?”

“Y-Yeah. Yup,” he says with a quick nod, “It’s just – this is – um,” he fights a blush and squeezes her waist, “This is super nice.”

As expected, she cracks up before he has the chance to comprehend the load of stupid that just slipped out of him, so he drops his head and hides his face in the crook of her neck. He’s laughing, too, because her laugh is the loveliest sound in the entire fucking universe and it’s not like he really has a choice.

Come to think of it he never really had a choice with her. From the very beginning it was either MJ or nothing. None of that has changed and he loves that. He can see himself choosing her for the rest of his life if she’ll let him.

.

.

.

They hardly see each other for the next couple of days because he’s on the morning shift again and she’s made it her mission to remind him that he needs to maintain a healthy sleep schedule. She’s right of course but he still contemplates telling her that he sleeps better when she’s next to him.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration. Waking up to the sight of her wrapped up in his sheets does make him feel more rested but admitting that to her would make him look needy and he’s not sure if she would appreciate that. She’s the epitome of self-reliance and he’s always been okay with that. He can’t just change his mind and not be okay with it anymore because they’re dating now.

.

.

.

“What’s your deal today?” Claire asks him during coffee break, eyes glued to her phone. (She’s probably texting Matt or her roommate, Santino, who’s a Film student at CCNY.) He observes her for a moment, torn between palming her off with a lie and using her as a sounding board. In the end, a third option wins out.

“What do you mean?”

She puts her phone on the counter and stares him down while he takes an extra-long sip from his coffee. He’s never been good at feigning innocence (or anything) but he can be pretty stubborn.

“You’re moping again,” Claire says because she can be pretty stubborn as well.

He keeps his voice light.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do. You’ve got the sad-puppy-eyes thing going on.”

“The what now?”

She gives him a slow, unimpressed blink and he gives up. The sad-puppy-eyes thing is his trademark move but it doesn’t have the same effect on everyone. Like, he tried it with MJ the other day in an attempt to coerce into staying the night at his place but MJ knows him too well, so she just rolled her eyes before she left. Well. Apparently, the sad-puppy-eyes thing has stopped working on Claire, too.

“Whatever it is, you better snap out of it,” she tells him, “Kazi the Clown will be here in an hour or so and I can’t deal with 15 hyped-up kids alone.”

He makes a face.

Kazi the Clown is actually a Polish dude from Hoboken who comes to Metro General once per month to cheer up the kids with balloon animals and his ‘funny’ dancing routine. His real name is Kazimierz Kazimierczak and he kinda looks like a psychotic mime artist in his costume but he makes the kids laugh and that’s what’s really important.

“I’ll try my best, ma’am,” he says, grinning when Claire goes back to poking at her phone with a snort and a shake of her head.

.

.

.

**ned:** pepper and tony are back together

 **ned:** hes wearing suits again!

 **me:** thank god

 **ned:** yeah. its a win for everyone

 **ned:** except for beck >:-)

 **ned:** also! my vacation request got approved so im gonna be in nyc next month!

 **me:** sweet :)

 **ned:** bettys gonna tag along btw

 **ned:** she wants to introduce me to her parents

 **me:** r u nervous

 **ned:** please

 **ned:** im delightful

 **ned:** still gonna wear my hat just to be on the safe side tho :D

.

.

.

At the end of March a German pilot deliberately crashes an airplane into a mountainside in the French Alps. Among the dead are 16 students from a German high school. He thinks about the kids at the ward and he can’t watch the news for three days straight whereas MJ watches the news excessively. She says she has to because watching the news is essential for her blog but her clipped tone and the bags under her eyes tell a different story. She cares. Too much sometimes. She’s determined to write about what happened and she’s devastated when she can’t find the right words.

“It’s okay,” he says when she’s curled up in his lap one night while Pumpkin is spread out at the other end of the couch, kicking and drooling in his sleep.

“No, it’s not,” she says, “I can’t _not_ write about this.”

He coils his arms around her.

“But you don’t have to write about it now, right? I know you want to but there’s no use in putting yourself under pressure like that.”

She doesn’t respond and he thinks he may have overstepped the mark. There sure are other people in her life who are far more qualified to talk about this than he is. Also: she didn’t ask him for advice and he couldn’t even give her any advice to begin with because he doesn’t know a single thing about journalism or what it’s like to be a writer. He just knows that it tends to take its toll on her every now and then.

“I’m sorry.”

He’s about to seal his apology with a kiss to the crown of her head when she leans back in his arms and fixes him with a stern  
expression.

“Do you think I don’t want to hear your opinion on certain things because you and I don’t work in the same field?”

“Um –”

“Because that’s bullshit.”

He swallows.

“Okay?”

“Most of the time you’re opinion is the _only_ opinion I want to hear,” she averts her gaze and inclines her head, “I thought you knew that.”

His heart surges until he feels it beating in his throat. He can’t tell if she’s angry with him or disappointed. He holds her a little tighter and tries not to panic.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and he’s desperate to explain himself but it looks like he’s not the only one who’s having trouble finding the right words tonight because the right words just won’t come. They remain locked away in the back of his mind, untouched and unattainable, and it’s not the first time he wishes he were better at talking to her.

.

.

.

So there are bad days. There are days when she’s stressed or upset about something. There are days when she comes back from the office and tells him she wants to quit her job. There are days when something terrible happens and she’s inconsolable. There are days when she needs space and he has to remind himself that it’s nothing personal. There are days when talking about Marvin makes her cry. There are days when talking about Marvin makes them both cry.

There are days when he has nightmares from the car crash that killed his parents or the moment Ben’s eyes became dull and lifeless. There are days when helping other people leaves him dog-tired. There are days when he needs to forget about what he’s seen at the ward and hearing MJ’s voice is the only thing that calms him down. There are days when talking to her isn’t as easy as it should be. There are days when he falls back into old patterns and starts counting reasons why he doesn’t deserve her.

But there are good days, too. Days when they go to the movies or a concert. Days when they’re back at ‘Pete’s’ for fries and milkshakes. Days when they’re at the park, mock-fighting over who’s the better dog parent. Days when they’re at May’s place and he’s doing the dishes while the two most important women in his life sit down in the living room and talk about their favourite feminist icons. Days when they’re out for drinks with his co-workers or hers and they say they have to leave early so they can make out in another side alley.

There are days when it’s just the two of them. Days when his inner nerd takes over and he says or does something that makes her laugh so hard that she can barely breathe. Days when her skin is warm and soft under his palms. Days when all they do is fawn over Pumpkin because he’s the best dog in the world. Days when they’re watching a shitty movie and she’s giggling at the TV screen, pointing out flaws and plot holes. Days when he’s looking at her and finds himself wondering how he got so lucky.

.

.

.

“You need to stop it with the pining,” Ned tells him during one of their Skype breakfasts, “You don’t have to treat her like she’s out of your league anymore.”

He sighs.

“She _is_ out of my league, Ned.”

“I know but this is what we were talking about back in February, remember? You’re being all anxious again. For, like, no reason.”

He shoves a piece of toast into his mouth so he can’t talk back at Ned and waits for him to elaborate because Ned is the kind of smart that gives Mensa members a run for their money and on top of that he has a point.

“I’m not saying you should take her for granted. You should _never_ do that,” he says, “You just need to calm down and accept that she _wants_ to be in a relationship with you.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

“Maybe. But I’ve never met two people who are more perfect for each other than you guys. Well, except for –”

“You and Betty?”

“Yup”, Ned says with a wide grin, “I can’t wait for you to meet her.”

He has to laugh because every time Ned starts talking about his girlfriend his voice becomes super soft and he has this dreamy look on his face. It’s probably the same look Peter has on his face whenever he gets the chance to talk about MJ.

“I just love her, you know,” he says after a moment, and his shoulders sag a little. The fact that he has no problem giving voice to his feelings for her when she’s not around frustrates him to no end.

Ned doesn’t give him a pep talk or tells him what to do. He doesn’t tell him to ‘man up’ or to get over himself. He just gets it and offers him a sympathetic smile and maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s exactly what he needs right now.

.

.

.

Here’s what really happened when they met: he snuck into the kitchen, feeling parched and a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of guests, and he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her because there was something about her that made his brain short-circuit.

He saw her and he knew she was cooler than he could ever be, and then they started talking and he knew she was going to be a permanent fixture in his life. He knew she was going to ruin him in one way or another and he knew he was going to stop worrying about that at some point. He knew that the strange tug in his chest was going to be something he’d have to get used to.

He also knew that he wasn’t going to try anything with her. She didn’t seem interested anyway and more importantly she was Marvin’s sister. She was Marvin’s beautiful, sarcastic, out-of-this-world intelligent little sister, so she was off-limits and even if she hadn’t been Marvin’s beautiful, sarcastic, out-of-this-world intelligent little sister, he would’ve had no right to stand next to her on that balcony, watching her smoke and feeling like everything was finally falling into place.

.

.

.

“You look stressed.”

“Um – what?”

“You look stressed,” a pause, “Why do you look stressed?”

It’s a good question. It’s a simple question and he would know how to answer it if he weren’t so sure that this is the first time Mr Wong is talking to him. (He could also be hallucinating. After all he’s been rifling through the store for the past hour or so, pulling books out of shelves and putting them back in whilst cursing under his breath like a surly old man.)

“I’m looking for a book,” he says eventually, causing Mr Wong to knit his brows and glare at him like he’s trying to figure out if he’s an idiot or not. (For the record: Peter is not an idiot. He’s just nervous as hell), “Uh – my girlfriend,” he stops and stifles a smile, “I’m meeting her parents. Like, _again_ ,” he cringes, “They’re – they’re really nice people but her mom’s birthday is this Saturday and – um – yeah, well.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, he wills himself to stop talking before it can get any worse. Unfortunately, Mr Wong is still glaring at him but there’s a hint of understanding saturating his gaze now and he has a cigarette tucked behind his ear, which means he must have been on his way outside when he found Peter losing his mind in the ‘Beat’ aisle on the second floor.

“You want to make a good impression.”

“I – I think so?”

“I wasn’t asking you a question.”

“Y-You weren’t?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

His shoes seem quite interesting all of a sudden. It’s stupid. He’s being stupid. He doesn’t have to make a good impression but he wants to and he can’t just bring flowers or a card or something like that. He needs to find a birthday present that’ll show Mrs Jones how much he appreciates her for bringing his dream girl into the world and Mr Jones how much he appreciates his wife without coming across like a suck-up. He squirms and rubs the back of his neck.

“Well, I can’t help you of you don’t tell me about her,” Mr Wong grumbles, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt like he’s preparing for battle, “What’s she like?”

.

.

.

He knows the basics. He knows that Mrs Jones was born and raised in Chicago and that her birthday is on the 8th of April. He knows about her soft spot for art and jazz music and comedies, and that proffering her guests all kinds of delicious food is her top priority when she’s throwing a party. (He also knows that she used to love throwing parties before her son died.)

Unlike her husband, Mrs Jones didn’t grow up in a wealthy white household, so she knew from a very young age that she had to work at least twice as hard as everyone else if she wanted to reach her goals. Her parents tried their best to support her but they didn’t have much. As a result, Mrs Jones applied for tons of scholarships and worked full-time at a bowling bar between semesters. That’s where she met Mr Jones who was the type of guy everyone on campus wanted to be friends with because he was laid-back and very good-looking and because he knew a lot about Proust and Brecht and Kellgren and Guimerà.

Peter doesn’t know how or when or why they fell in love. He never asked. He’s often so intimidated by MJ’s parents that he turns into a nervous wreck and forgets about the rules of social conversation when he’s in the same room with them. It probably has more to do with his insecurities than their academic background or financial status.

.

.

.

**ned:** ten days!!!

 **me:** i know!!!

 **me:** do u think mj and betty will get along

 **ned:** ofc they will

 **ned:** theyre gonna bond over how lame their boyfriends are

.

.

.

It’s a small party. Just close family members and a handful of friends. He’s here as MJ’s boyfriend and his hands are trembling when the door flies open and Mrs Jones comes into view. She’s wearing a thin cardigan and a long yellow sundress and she pulls him into a hug before he can enter the house. She gives the best hugs (aside from May) and she tells him that he shouldn’t have made such an effort when he hands her the little bag that contains her presents.

After another hour of stressful rummaging, he and Mr Wong finally settled on three books: _Frida by Frida_ , _Lady Sings the Blues_ and _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_. He’s not sure how she’s going to feel about the last one (it’s definitively more in his niche than hers) but her face lights up at the sight of the cover. He takes it as a win.

“I’m kinda surprised,” MJ chuckles about an hour later when they’re sitting on the steps of the back porch while Pumpkin and some of MJ’s younger cousins play fetch in the garden, “I didn’t think you were gonna lay it on so thick.”

He sputters, still reeling with joy from earlier when Mr Jones walked up to him, thanked him for coming and for being there for his daughter when no one else could. He even gave him a friendly clap on the back, which made Peter feel like he was receiving an accolade, and made him promise to join them for dinner more often in the future.

“They’re your parents.”

“Yeah but they already liked you,” she says, picking at the sleeve of her light grey t-shirt dress. It’s pretty warm today and she looks glorious as ever, especially with the necklace sitting between her collarbones, “They’ve told you so multiple times.”

He looks at the ground.

“I guess I felt like I had to prove myself.”

He feels like an asshole for saying this. It makes the Joneses look like they think they’re better than him, which he knows is not what they think at all. What’s even worse: it makes MJ look like she’s some prize that needs to be won, which goes against everything she believes in. He leans back on his hands and scowls at himself. He gets a little lost in his thoughts until he can feel her thumb smooth out the space between his brows.

“I’m not gonna call you an idiot because you look kinda sad right now but I want you to know that there’s no need for you to feel like you have to prove yourself to my family,” she says, fingers sliding up and around his head, effectively (and perhaps purposely) messing up his hair, “Or _me_.”

She makes it sound like it’s no big deal and he looks at her, really looks at her. Her smile is cautious but compassionate and he really loves it when she’s wearing her hair in a bun because it gives him the opportunity to watch even the most fleeting, most inconspicuous micro-expression flicker across her face.

His vision becomes blurry. He does everything in his power to get it under control and if she can see him struggling, she decides not to comment on it. Instead, she traps his hand between hers and presses the lightest kiss to his cheek.

“We’re equals, you and I,” she murmurs, and the words shock him to te core. They make him freeze, make him blink and sniffle and choke out a watery laugh because he wants to believe her so badly.

.

.

.

She shows him Marvin’s old room after dinner and they sit on the floor for a with their backs to the alcove and their legs stretched out in front of them, listening to the bustle that’s wafting up from downstairs.

She tells him a story he already knows. It’s about her and Marvin and how they used to get into huge fights over who’s the smarter one and how in the end they would settle their argument by playing this hardcore version of _Trivial Pursuit_ that they had invented themselves. She reiterates the rules like she always does and he can’t follow her because the rules sound crazy complicated and involve a lot of obscure literary references.

So he just listens and revels in the knowledge that she’s letting him be here with her when she could easily keep Marvin’s old room, this incredibly personal space that’s full of fond memories, from him. She doesn’t, though, and he wants to tell her that he loves her but like so many times before his throat cords up and he can’t get the words out.

**Author's Note:**

> as some of you already know: i’m a non-native speaker who’s trying her best. despite that i’m having fun writing this fic, so i’d love to hear from you in the comments.
> 
> updates every other friday. some chapters will be short, some others will be longer. links will be posted accordingly on my [tumblr](https://befehlvonganzunten.tumblr.com).
> 
> stay safe :)


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